


chasers of the end

by orphan_account



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Ambiguous Relationships, Artificial Intelligence, Hacking, Mental Health Issues, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, adding more character/pairing tags as they appear, yabai
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-02-11 10:39:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2064975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They still tell the story of Gensokyo in some circles of the Internet: the great AIs that ran the corporations that ran the government, and the impulsive, amoral hacker girl who brought them all to their knees. But, they say, this story doesn't have a happy ending. No one can decide if they are right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. departures

The first experience Seija Kijin ever has with cyberspace is when she is seventeen, in a dilapidated bar below the streets of the Village; a place so closed and cloistered off, basement level sorts, below solid concrete floors, that she thinks she is hallucinating when she opens the creaking iron door and realized everyone here is hooked up to rigs. One by one she examines them, lanky script kiddies lurched over their keyboards, their eyes wide open unmoving but mouths mumbling and fingers tapping unconsciously, faster than gunfire. There are probably ten of them, plus the nonchalant bartender, who continues wiping the edge of a glass as if trying to wear it down to sand, and they are all somewhere else. They are somewhere Seija isn’t, drifting into a world she’s only been able to imagine for herself, their distance apparent in the glaze of their eyes, the quiet adjusting of their pupils.

She takes one look and scowls, jealously gritting her teeth. Money has never been accessible to her, and now that she’s looking for some sort of hustle, Seija feels envy eating at her in ways she once thought impossible. The units are small enough, portable as something so advanced could get, and she’s not a stranger to old-fashioned, complex terminal interactions. When you have to talk directly to a system of memory and processing, something so robotic without the ease and glide of the user interface, you learn about computers from the inside out. You learn how to manipulate every corner of it, create your own fucking interface from scratch. Seija has done that, explored the entrails of a computer with delicate surgeon’s hands, and with a glance around the room she sees it on them-- the pilots are so _spoiled_. Cushy pseudo-hackers with no knowledge of the true form of what they’re inside. They can see the brain just fine; but the veins, the limbs, the lungs and kidneys and liver are invisible under the skin of their pretty glossy systems. None of them deserve it.

She quickly resolves that by the dawn she would have one of these rigs, still warm from the buzz of another amateur programmer’s hand, and the corners of her mouth turn up into a pointed, vicious smile.

 

Cut to: Seija, behind the bartender’s counter, pressing the barrel of a pistol into the back of the man’s bald head. The kids are still absorbed, still compromised. They can’t see anything other than their alternate universe and maybe an inch over, but Seija doesn’t blame them. It’s probably much prettier down there; less gritty, and once she pulls the trigger, it’ll be much less bloody.

She wonders if it’s black and white down there, or if it’s rendered in shiny glinting colors. She wonders if it’ll be harder to adjust to than green text prompts.

She wonders this, as she slams the bartender’s head into the worn granite counter, and then fires.

 

Only one pilot buzzes out at the kicking sound of the gun, and Seija leaps off the counter as he struggles upwards, dizzy now from his return to meatspace. She gets to him, first, and he’s utterly powerless as she pistol whips him and shoves him against the brick wall, the nose of her gun prodding just under his chin. His breath gusts out against her shoulder, eyes wide like a rabbit backed into a corner.

“Still coming back to life, huh, _greenhorn_?” she grins. “Not happening.” And then the trigger pulls and he’s slumped over on the floor, bleeding from the neck, limbs tangling in ways that probably aren’t natural. Seija checks his pulse for good measure, and silently praises her luck-- the gunshot sound didn’t kick anyone else out of space, either, and this rig is as good as hers. She pockets the jack, silently zips the screen inside her multipocketed hoodie, and walks back behind the counter to delete the evidence.

Bartender’s still logged in-- how precious. No password to unlock. She opens the terminal to open the security system app, selects the evidence, admin overrides it, and it’s suddenly like she never killed anyone at all. Not here, at least, and not today.

She offers a few more prompts to the terminal before killing all the processes and deleting app histories from the past hour or so. She pulls up the order screen that all bars and restaurants have on their computers, sets the mouse back where she found it (halfway across the screen plus 200 pixels to the right, moved all the way to the top) and makes sure she takes her shoes off so she doesn’t track blood everywhere.

The door flies open in a raging wind and Seija finds it so fortunate: blood on her white shoes fades back into foam in the relentless rain. She doesn’t have to walk home barefoot today.

 

* * *

 

Home for Seija at this point is a dilapidated apartment at the top of an endless-seeming spiral staircase, that goes up and up against black walls covered with posters and pounding breakcore music from just outside the stair shaft. People say about the city that certain youkai gravitate to certain neighborhoods, and Seija considers this quite true. She and about 35 other amanojaku live within the echoing spine of this apartment complex, plus two crow tengu (nuisances in person, but close in her circle) and one strange youkai living on the 3rd floor that no one really knows enough about to describe even their species, much less what they do. Seija is still quite curious-- a human living undercover? Or a youkai so powerful that no one even understands their presence? She doesn't even know what gender they are, or if they even have one. The person never leaves their room, not that she knows of, and she's never seen their name on the apartment records.

She slams the door, this thought still buzzing in her head, and picks up a Sharpie and Post-it note to write herself a memo. "Research that weird one in my building," it reads, in her scrawled, abrupt handwriting. "DO NOT let them find out."

After that's done, Seija opens her hoodie to find the jack hanging out from her inner pocket. A thrill of anxiety goes through her as she remembers: she's got this now, her own (well, sort of) cyberspace rig. She pulls it out from the wide pocket and sets it carefully on the desk, checking it for dents and scratches before opening the screen and admiringly stroking the edges. Grinning, she pulls out her creaking chair and falls into it with a slight crack of plastic, watching her screen flash as she wraps the cable around her right ear.

The jack is sitting there, temptingly, on the table. All she would need to do is buzz in. _And then?_ she thinks, and for some reason the thought sounds unsure, worried.

 _And then,_ her mind fills out, _you're going to fuck shit up._

 _Good answer,_ she thinks, and places the jack behind her ear.

 

* * *

 

 _Contact._ The thumping of the repetitive, sped-up Amen breaks suddenly fade into clear, dark silence. All senses collapse into the pulsing of her heartbeat, like the sound you hear when you're under the water. Sharp, cold, transparent nodes of data tumble about beneath her, each glowing a different color. A golden stream of millions of connections divide the thrumming darkness, like a highway: people browsing the social networks, traffic high and bumper-to-bumper. Seija does a joyous loop, in midair.

Although her earthly body is lithe and athletic and doesn't deter her from her jobs, she can't help but feel free; she's cast off the layers of dense flesh that make up her amanojaku body and gained an infinite, inexhaustible lightness. Another couple of twists around herself, effortless and excited. Seija feels dizzy, drunk on freedom. She drops, then, hurtling like a comet in space, earthbound and ready.

She doesn't even know what her objective is yet; she just knows that she wants to fuck shit up, as her inner monologue put so succinctly. What that entails Seija isn't really sure herself, and seventeen might not be the best age to plunge Gensokyo City into anarchy, so for two years she learns the innards of the system. Working through loops of code that are as stubborn and frustrating as she is, watching from above as low-level youkai and neophyte humans struggle in the crowds of information, Seija finds herself ensconced in this new, glassy-eyed universe. She journeys through caverns of illegal data, traces and pranks a couple of amanojaku in her building ( _so_ worth the trouble!) and learns how to unravel the protective ice around sensitive corporate databases.

This leads to a discovery. One late-night long diving and coding session, she rockets north and immediately hits high-level, puzzling labyrinths of trap-laden ice. In an instant she feels a sharp, unrelenting pain pierce her skull, and blood is running down her incorporeal forehead before she can even think. Panicking, nearly blinded by pain, she buzzes out, and immediately collapses onto the concrete floor of her apartment.

" _Augh_ \-- fuck, what happened--"

Her hands shake as she brings her fingers to her forehead and trace a long line of warm blood running straight down the middle of her hairline. Eyes shooting open in fear, she yanks her hands away, wipes them on her cutoff shorts. She had heard about this: some ice was _lethal_. Some of it had traps upon traps, that could spiral right through your mind like a drill and destroy your conscious brain. Some of it was like a nightmare; an unseen monster ripping apart your head, one you wake up from and realize that you're still bleeding.

Even as she scrambles back up into her seat, takes a long swig of black coffee (cold by now, but _caffeine!_ ) and buzzes back in, the only thing on Seija's mind is: _what could be behind that wall?_

 

* * *

 

It takes days to find it again. She comes across it by accident, and takes care to slow down once she feels the familiar ache of twisting code traps in her head. Floating backwards, suddenly intensely aware of her corporeal body she's left behind, she reaches out her left index finger and pricks it deliberately on one spike.

Blood falls from it, morphing straight into data. She winces, catches the strings of code in her right hand: cyberspace DNA. _**Seija Kijin.** **Age:** 17\. **Species:** Youkai -- Amanojaku. **Criminal Record** : Two infractions of underage drinking. One petty theft_. (This was back when she was 14, when she stole a pair of headphones from an electronics store in the uptown Bamboo district. They only found out five months later.) Seija quickly resolves to start working on dissolving her net presence, and shoots back downwards towards the crevasses of danger and vice, Hellwards.

Gensokyo itself corresponds to its relative location in meatspace. Directly above Seija's head, where the city turns to bright and star-encrusted palaces, stands the shining castles and glimmering borders of government, most action past that invisible to average divers. Higher up is the Netherworld, the mist-covered, haunted back streets of the abandoned district that was ruined in the nuclear disaster, nothing left behind there in cyberspace but old mysterious archives and dangerous ghosts. Myouren District is the mainly empty, calm labyrinth in the center of the broken wasteland of the Netherworld. In cyberspace inexplicable visions are seen there: sailors with bottomless ladles that drown unwitting explorers, huge pink clouds leading people astray, magicians with long glowing hair distorting their forms into stars and lotuses. Seija has heard that a node exists there that you can never escape from once you enter, an endless spiral of silent code, down into an echoing grave frozen in time.

To the east, the Human Village, Mayohiga and Hakurei: citizens, average hobby programmers, stroll there on most days. Just east of center is where the social networks lie, laid out in grid patterns not unlike those of the Village. With all the hapless humans buzzing around there it could be a great place to attack, if security wasn't upped in the past few years to protect the innocent neophytes. Where the Bamboo district is in meatspace, Eientei stands instead, a monumental corporate building with ice so thick you could die from a graze. To get there you'd have to wander through endless forests of data, though legend has it a strange apparition leads potential rebels through the maze and up directly into the middle.

To the west is Youkai Mountain district, where the less mainstream news flows in erratic, disguised packages. The tengu and kappa, pioneers of alternative media and hacking respectively, live there and spend most of their time buzzed in, circulating ideas and truths that are in code languages no one but those of the Movement can decipher. While the kappa developed the tools, and the tengu spread the word, it was the amanojaku that really gave hacking its anarchist connotations, and Seija has been one of them since long ago-- since cyberspace was only command lines and prompts, green text on a CRT monitor.

Two of her housemates, the talkative crow tengu couple Aya and Hatate, are actually renowned out West for their discoveries: those of the puppet government, run in secret by Gensokyo corporations, led by four legendary warring AIs. Eientei is the most famous, and outwardly the most benevolent, but Seija has heard stories of their ruthless AI leader, the Lunarian. Then there's Chireiden, based Hellwards, with an AI leader that is said to read minds-- and an equally dangerous, more unpredictable sister. Yakumo is based somewhere in Mayohiga, but no one knows exactly where, and their AI, the Ancient, is said to be the most mysterious and merciless of all. The fourth corporation is unknown, unrevealed; no matter how close Aya gets, she can never unravel the mystery of what and who it is. Hatate nearly died on an intel run to Hakugyokurou trying to get more information, and the rumor is that Aya never really got over it.

Then south-- Hellwards, directly under Seija's feet, there run the caverns of illicit trade, copied archives, and incomprehensible phenomenons. Nobody goes there without a guide or at least decent knowledge of hacking, since it's so dangerous simply because it's unmonitored by government. Thieves and rogues, hidden spies, or brute-force prowlers can leap out at you, dig you into a hole of code so deep you can't see yourself, or just kill you there on the spot. The legend circulating there is that there's a group of youkai more powerful than the government down there, who dabble in cyberspace every so often and cause complete chaos. Plus Chireiden is down there, and even if you could get through the ice, _no one_  really wants to encounter a mind reading AI.

Seija has seen all of this from green text and command lines, but now that she's here, she makes the connections easily. Things that were once just ideas come to visual life; the words become sounds, the directions colored. Netherwards becomes purple, Villagewards goes yellow, Mountainwards turns green, Hellwards is a deep and disturbing red. Seija's senses are dazzled by the magic and fluidity of it all as she descends into Hell, watching crimson data nodes tumble and gyrate in the waves of black space.

 

Then a sharp pain in her side. Seija feels something cold digging into it, something distinctly metal. It starts to grow in size, and the pain is agonizing as the knife slides between two of her ribs and she screams, screams till her ears bulge in the silence, and buzzes out.

 

* * *

 

When she comes to, she's on the floor of her apartment, bleeding from a wound in her ribs-- but it's wrapped, bandaged, and Seija touches it tentatively. It wasn't ice, she knows that; it was a much more physical, brutal pain. She looks down at her wrapped side, in confusion and silent thankfulness.

The rig makes an awful keening, crackling noise, and the whirring of the fan comes to a complete stop. Seija gapes.

"Are you fucking _kidding_ me," she screeches, roundhouse kicking the rig from the desk and letting it fall to the floor. Even from that, nothing is broken hardware-wise; these new Yasaka models are tough and portable. But Seija senses something distinctly wrong with the software.

She pulls her flip phone from her pocket and dials the only number she can think of.

 

"Hello, Kawashiro Repairs here. This is Nitori, how can I help?"

"'Tori."

"Seija?! Oh gosh, lemme guess: monitor problem again? You really gotta get a rig one of these days, I'm tellin' ya--"

"Nah, I got one. Jacked it off an amateur hacker. But it kicked me out, injured my side. Nothing's wrong hardware-wise, I think it's the user settings?"

"Wait, what? You got one?!"

"Yeah I just told you I did. Anyway, is there--"

"Hold up. You said you jacked it?"

" _Amano_ jacked it," Seija says, with a grin. Nitori bursts into laughter.

"Okay, okay. You win this pun contest, for today. Seij? I gotta get you into my system for later this afternoon. You're free then, right? You gotta tell me all about this, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah, got it. Help me reset the user protocols and I'll be good; I have no idea how to get into this sort of hardware."

"Gotcha. At four sound good?"

"Why not."

The receiver cuts off with a solid click. Seija sits back down on the bed, holding her side with two hands, as her blood dries on the bandages and between her fingers.


	2. feedback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nitori fixes Seija's rig. Seija gets a recruit.

The door to Nitori’s workshop is loose on its hinges, and creaks indecisively every time it’s opened-- a functional entrance bell, only less glamorous. The rain outside has gotten unbearable, sheets of it falling on the asphalt, drenching the facades of neon-lit bars and cascading down corrugated-tin gutters. Rivulets of slightly acidic rain gather on Seija’s cheeks, come dripping off her chin one by one as she opens the door.

Nitori grins and waves her over, a buck-toothed enthusiastic smile that makes Seija huff in restrained laughter. She shrugs off her bomber jacket, pulling the rig out from her inner pocket, and pushes the hood off her head. She can still feel the buzzing of the broken rig under her arm, the noise of a doomed machine determined not to die. Sliding it over towards Nitori on the polished wood counter, she shrugs.

“Kicked me out. Pretty sure it’s a user issue. But we went over this, right,” she admits, pulling out the creaking wooden stool and sitting down with a wet thump.

“Yeah, it’s definitely...” Nitori trails off, looks lost in thought for a moment. In the background Seija hears the repetitive throb of a house backbeat. “It’s definitely that,” Nitori finishes. “You probably didn’t expect a script kiddie like him to have protective user protocols in place, but the new Yasaka models are all about security, so there’s ways for even neophytes like him to set those up. Step-by-step guides, of course,” she adds, seeing Seija’s skeptical look, “but they work, and they work well. They’re usually built on the assumption that no one but admin knows the admin password, however.”

Seija knows where this is going. Nitori’s password generator tool has saved her ass a number of times. It’s a simple enough tool: a character generator, digit by digit, that finds the correct letter and then moves on. She’s used it in everything from recovering a kid’s forgotten password to decrypting archives of sensitive government data, before she had the accident and everything Nitori had went to shit.

“Ah. Got it. Okay, you know what to do, right? I bet they make it easy for you,” she says, the slightest hint of a snicker in her voice.

“Yep,” Seija monotones, and pulls up the settings dialog. There’s a silence, masked only by the sound of the fierce rain on the tin roof, and then she continues. “I’m looking to take on a project. Probably wouldn’t have needed this rig if I wasn’t gonna do it. So. Just in case you wanted to know.”

“Ooh.” That seemed to catch Nitori’s interest. Ever since the accident, ever since she lost her left arm and her capability to connect to cyberspace, Nitori had been eager to help the movement in any way she can. She wouldn’t settle for just giving up on hacking-- instead, she found a way to help the amanojaku freerunners keep it going for her. “What’s this mysterious project? I wanna know, Seij, come _ooooooon_ \--"

“There’s not much to it. I’m gonna go in, do intel runs on the main four, and fuck shit up for the government.”

“But you’re gonna work _for_ them? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“I dunno either. But I’ve developed a virus. It’s gonna take some work to get it right, but it’s kinda like a footprint... let them know that Corp A has been here, only six months later when I’m done, paid and gone.”

“Dangerous,” Nitori says, without looking up. She’s been fiddling with her wrench for the past ten minutes.

“Just the way I like it,” Seija replies, a quick smile at the corner of her lip. “You got any info on how the rest of them are doing?”

“Ehh...” Nitori shrugs, looks up. “No one in your building can hack like you do. There’s been some talk down in Former Hell, but it’s probably just the bridge kids stirring up their rumors again. Also, the green apartment building in that one complex in Bamboo, all of them got rigs at the same time, and lots of them are amanojaku ready to rally up, but they’re all kind of... kids.” She pulls the corner of her mouth into an indifferent frown. “Although, now that you mention it, there’s someone you might wanna watch out for. Or potentially recruit. Or both.”

Seija’s head snaps up from the screen. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know much about her, no one does. But she came around the other day to fix... something, I dunno. Looked like a hotspot or something, set up to upload a virus so it can’t be traced or whatever. Dark hair, ponytail, and weird fucking wings.”

“A tengu?”

“No. I don’t... even know what she is. But I found out even more about her. She never looks the same. She’s always changing her name, appearance, fingerprints even. No one tracks her down and she probably has some sort of list of all the faces she’s ever worn. They call her UFO, as a catch-all. I heard,” Nitori says, leaning in closer to Seija in a stage-whisper, “that she could be anyone, anywhere, watching you close-up, and you’d never know.”

A shiver goes down Seija’s spine. She presses her eyes closed, in an attempt to understand. “So wait. What does she even do?”

“Ex-government assassin, is all I know. Probably got outta there during the Schism. Everyone knew something was wrong, even the officials, so I guess she had some sort of moral obligation?”

Seija doesn’t reply, only moves the cursor around absently on the screen. “I dunno if it’s moral so much as just being angry and wanting revenge.”

“You gotta watch out for her, anyway,” Nitori says flatly, and goes back to fiddling with her wrench. “Or, alternatively, recruit her. If you can.”

“You doubting me, ‘Tori?”

“It’s not about you. It’s about her. She’s... dangerous.”

Seija decides not to say anything to that. She notices the worried look on Nitori’s face, a sort of _maybe I shouldn’t have just told you_ glance, and tentatively reaches a hand over and pats her on the back.

“Hey, let’s get drinks,” she offers, and Nitori slowly sits upright.

“Ehh? Really?”

“Yeah, before I change my mind. This thing’s all fixed up. I’ll pay you in drinks, if that’s okay?”

“I mean I should really try to think more about saving my money but I just... really need a drink right now,” Nitori admits, and stands up. Her bionic arm flexes, swivels around. Seija can hear the churning of gears, the needle-toothed mechanics from deep inside Nitori’s elbow.

“You’ve done enough for one day. Let’s drink and call it a night,” Seija urges, before she shrugs on her jacket and flips up the hood. The door swings open in a rush of wind and rain. Nitori grabs the umbrella.

 

* * *

 

 

The bartender is a yamabiko, a little too short for the job, but the drinks are amazing. Nitori’s a cocktail sort, but Seija traditionally just knocks back beers until she’s satisfied, and sometimes takes sips of whatever Nitori’s having. The good thing about having a yamabiko for a bartender, Seija thinks dimly as she finishes her second beer, is that you can always hear them over the crowd.

“‘Ey! Kyouko! Can I have the usual,” comes a yell from the other end of the bar. The bartender looks around quickly, and Seija finds herself glancing as well, trying to find where the loud, somewhat gruff voice came from. It belongs, she quickly finds as Kyouko rushes over, to a tall, muscular oni with swept blonde hair and a red horn on her forehead.

“Yuugi! I’ll be there in a second,” Kyouko chirps. Seija recognizes the name-- and puts the face to it. Yuugi, the oni from Former Hell who comes up every so often with her partner Suika and causes trouble in the lower city. She’s sitting right there, brandishing an empty sake cup, grinning and laughing heartily under the dusty lowlights.

“Where’s Suika? She’s usually around,” Seija asks Nitori, after Yuugi has finally quieted down and gotten the sake she wanted. “I’ve never seen the two of ‘em apart, y’know...”

“Suika? I heard from Aya that she’s ’n a bit of trouble, hiding ’n stuff.” Nitori’s words begin to slur together. And then, suddenly, she starts. “Oh, _holy shit_ , Seij, look behind you--"

Seija turns, slowly, almost imperceptibly. Towards the back wall, in the throbbing crowd, a flash of oddly shaped wings. Knives, almost. Red and blue.

“Is that...”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s.” Nitori whispers, and Seija can hear the panic in her voice. “ _Seij._ We gotta leave.”

“No we don’t, she might just be here for her own stuff, there’s no way she could--"

“Remember what I told you? You never know who she is,” Nitori says, and bites her lip. “Gotta leave. Somehow. There’s a back entrance. You could ask Kyouko--"

A flash of black, over Seija’s eyes, and she hears Nitori’s voice in a startled yelp before she turns, comes face to face with her, and--

 

* * *

 

 

\--wakes up, back alley, it’s still raining. Her hands are tied. Her hands are tied, and-- _where_ \-- where’s _Nitori_ , where’s the jacket, the _rig_ , who--

The girl raises her face and looks directly at Seija. Through the sleepy blur of her eyes she can see it, what makes everyone fear her: the direct glimpse of the unknown. Her eyes are bright red. They leave afterimages, when Seija closes hers again, and--

“I’ve heard about you, Kijin,” the voice says, and Seija’s almost surprised at how young it sounds. She starts to get a bad feeling; she starts to struggle, against the zip ties. She’s unfastened them before, they’re easy if you have more than two minutes, but her nails are too short. The girl is talking, again. “Wait, let me straighten this out first. I’ve heard about you, and I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Fuck-- you-- let me out,” Seija growls, her heels hitting the concrete in protest. Her captor shrugs.

“I told you I wasn’t here to hurt you. Are you listening?”

"No," she replies, and immediately her forehead hits the brick wall. She winces, pain dripping through her nerves like hot wax, and a droplet of blood makes its way down and over her right eye. "Augh--  _get off--_ "

"Shut up. Hear me out."

“Rgh,” Seija groans, and twists her wrists, one around the other. “Fine. What do you want from me.”

“I want to run this with you.”

“You _what_?”

“I want to help,” she repeats. “You can’t do this sort of shit by yourself, you know that? I’ve heard the ideas, I know what you want and I want it too. And I know you’re an amanojaku, you like to work alone. But,” she says, her tone dropping, “if you’re going to turn someone down ‘cause of your own fucking pride, you’d best not do it to me.”

“Is this one of those offers I can’t refuse?”

“Yep.”

“What if I,” and Seija makes a face at this, turns away slightly, “what if I said I wanted you on my side anyway?”

That seems to take the girl aback. She kneels down beside Seija, undoes the zipties on her wrists-- but the barrel of her gun is still pressed into Seija’s side, a reminder.

“That’s kinda unexpected,” she says, her tone becoming a little more casual. “Don’t move.”

Seija obliges, as the girl takes off her own jacket and reveals her wings. Red and blue, patterned like knives or graffiti on brick walls. Arrows and blades, in contrasting colors, that flash under the rain-lit streetlight. Seija feels a thrill in her chest, something primal and adrenaline-driven. This is something, _she_ is something, so out of the ordinary that it almost seems extraterrestrial, unnatural. Her wings curl inwards, and Seija sees them twist like a flat sheet of metal, almost two-dimensional.

The girl still has the gun pressed to her ribs as she hands Seija back the rig and her jacket. “The other one’s inside. Sitting next to Hoshiguma. Let’s hope she didn’t get crushed, that one can be a bear when she’s drunk.”

“Wait,” Seija says, and feels the cold metal leave her side. The girl looks at her, sideways.

“What?”

“How do I know if I can trust you?”

“You can have my real name.”

Seija stops, right there, in her tracks. “ _Wh_ \--"

“Nue. Nue Houjuu.”

And then, without waiting for confirmation, without even a sound, she leads Seija by the wrist back through the door of the bar and into the thumping, writhing crowd.

 


	3. downwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seija and Nue go together.

She is wearing probably the most oddly assembled outfit Seija has ever seen: a purple cutoff tank with a cartoon UFO print, green bandages wrapped liberally around both arms (Seija's not sure if they're to cover wounds or if they're just for decoration,) and navy cargo shorts. She has her wings hidden, and Seija realizes; she's a shapeshifter youkai, maybe even the legendary nue she was named after? Seija always thought nue had a tiger face, a tanuki body, and... dragon legs? She can't remember. But then again, no one knows what nue actually look like, so it makes some sense.

As Seija watches, she's laughing at some joke without any recognizable discretion, shamelessly losing it over something Yuugi said involving a shrine maiden and a sake dish. It's almost unthinkable how free she is, how she doesn't seem to have a care in the world about concealing her identity, and Seija realizes it's because she never wears the same disguise twice. Instantly she feels a pang of jealousy, at Nue's shapeshifting and easy confidence.

"Hey, Kijin, snap outta it," comes Nue's voice from her right, bringing Seija straight out of her envious reverie. "Did you hear the one about the wolf tengu? Oh, man, Yuugi, tell her the story--"

"Nah, I told it once, I don't feel like bothering," the oni says in a drunken drawl. "But I'll tell ya about the tiny hashihime I hang out with sometimes, at the gates Hellwards. This one's a long one..."

Seija puts her chin in her hand and leans over the table, her free hand brushing the cold droplets of condensation on the side of her beer bottle. “Where’s Nitori,” she asks Nue, who jerks her thumb backwards towards the toilets.

“In the bathroom. She overdid it, I guess?” Nue shrugs. “Yuugi tried to talk her out of drinking too much, but...”

“She can’t take as much as she used to,” Seija explains. “Since the incident-- since she lost her arm-- her body’s been really weak. You barely see her outside the workshop anymore.”

“Makes sense. I mean, she’s tiny already, and if you lose an arm your body weight drops a good amount, right?”

“I don’t think it works like that...”

Nue gives a toothy grin, then turns back to her drink. Seija’s eyes wander up, through the dusty scaffolding of the bar, into the creaking floorboards above them. She can feel the thumping of feet and the groaning of wood above her. The Oni’s Hideaway, as they call the bar, is located directly under some mysterious hotel building. Oni, kappa and tengu often come here for cheap drinks and a place to talk revolution, so it's familiar enough to Seija, and the place is comfortable and loud enough for surreptitious deals to go on behind the scenes. _Nitori used to go here after every job_ , Seija remembers, in a sort of celebration for a heist well done. The last time she ever came here in good spirits was the day before she took on the run that stole her arm and her mind, and Seija remembers it so clearly; Nitori smiling with all her teeth, throwing down glass after glass of tap beers, cheering and toasting Aya and Hatate-- then looking at Seija with the most excited gaze she had ever seen on the little kappa's face, and launching into her full-speed before she could react. (Later, she was unconscious, comatose in a hospital bed, where Seija listened to the unsteady pinging of the EKG-- Nitori, her brain overworked, nerves fried, arm torn off at the shoulder, and Seija tenses just thinking about it.)

Since then the Hideaway has only been a retreat for Nitori, when she gets discouraged or tired or fed up. But something feels different now. _Something,_ Seija pinpoints, being the lanky shapeshifter youkai in the seat next to her.

"Uh, Houj--"

"Call me Nue, okay?" She cuts Seija off, quickly with an absent wave of her hand. Her eyes are half-lidded, her speech languid and off-guard. "Especially here."

"Fine. _Nue._ I gotta take Nitori back. When she drinks too much her body... gets in trouble. You can come too. I gotta go over some stuff with you, as well."

"That's okay," Nue says, the corner of her mouth turning up lazily. Seija can see a sharp white fang when her lips peel back like that, glinting in the dusky blacklight of the bar. For some reason, it intimidates her. "I'll meet you outside, when you get Nitori all sorted."

Seija stands up, pushing her chair back quietly, and dips through the crowd into the dark hallway where the restrooms are. She hears a sort of coughing laugh, and knocks on the metal door, only for a very woozy, very unaware Nitori to come swaying through the door from the men's restroom.

"' _Tori_ ," Seija starts, and then stops when she sees Nitori's face. "Aw, fuck. You know you can go to the women's one, people here are cool--"

"The bouncer wouldn't let me," she whines, her head sagging. "I guess I didn't do a good job of passing?"

"Aw, shush. You look fine. I'll give that fucker a piece of my mind," Seija growls, and feels the tips of her ears go red. "Go join Nue, she's waiting for us outside. I'll give the bouncer what for."

"You don't hafta..."

"You know how I feel about that kind of thing," Seija bristles. She turns sharply, towards the back entrance, while Nitori uneasily walks back to the light.

 

* * *

 

Seija comes to blows with him-- the man is standing outside the back door, smoking, when she slams open the heavy door and stares him straight in the eye.

"Oy, are you that amanojaku brat?"

" _Quiet_ ," she hisses, and turns slightly on her heel before she catches the back of his head in her palm and then slams his face into the brick wall. He yowls, but Seija keeps it muffled, and presses her sharp nails into his scalp.

"So what's with ya, making my friend use the wrong restroom? Huh?" Seija spits. "I was gonna talk to the management, but bureaucracy fucks up these kinda complaints. You won't get away with doing that again, hear?"

The bouncer turns, pulling a pistol shakily, but Seija's wrist comes up from her hips before he can get it gripped and the cold black metal glints in the streetlight as it flies upwards. She catches it, presses the barrel into his chest.

"Is that clear?" she repeats, and the bouncer timidly nods his head yes. Satisfied, Seija pockets the gun. "Right," she says, and heads back towards the pulsing house beats and out through UV lights, into the streets under the rainlit skies.

 

* * *

 

 

Jagged edges of neon lights blur Seija's vision as she walks with Nue and a half-conscious Nitori back towards her apartment complex. Nue has her hands in the pockets of her cargo shorts ( _seriously, what's with her outfit anyway?_ Seija thinks as she walks) and is absentmindedly popping a piece of gum when Seija opens the door to the building.

"Hey, wait, lemme get something from my place quick--"

"We came all the way here!"

"This is my building," Nue says, flatly, as if it'd been so obvious the whole time. Seija's jaw drops as the pieces click: the unnamed, unidentified youkai on the third floor, her wounds bandaged when she was thrown out of cyberspace, how Nue knew where they were-- _how_ did she not get it? Seija nearly facepalms at how clear it had been, from the beginning.

But it doesn't matter much now. In fact, it makes things much easier. They file into the elevator, and Nue presses the third floor button with her pinky. 

"It's just my rig. I'll catch up with you in ten," she says, as the doors slide open and then closed, the last image in Seija's mind her quickly retreating back.

 

* * *

 

She's just lying Nitori out on her bed when she hears the knock on the steel apartment door. Quietly, she pulls the covers over the small kappa and peers through the eyehole, before cracking open the door and letting Nue stride in.

"Wow. You don't clean your room at all," the youkai comments passively.

"Shut up," Seija growls. "I like working when things are messy."

"Typical amanojaku," Nue laughs and pulls up another chair at Seija's desk. "So do I get a guide to what you're even planning to do or what?"

"I'm tempted not to tell you anything, but then it wouldn't work," Seija grumbles, and pulls out her rig from the cabinet next to her desk. Setting it up, she hears the tinny whirr of fans from inside the module, and sighs in relief. Nitori did a good job, she thinks, and opens the case.

Nue's already got hers, unfolded and spread on her side. It hums with a faint tone, almost a musical note, and she flashes a prideful grin Seija's way when she notices the stare.

"It's kinda old, but way ahead," she explains, as the screen glows a faint purple color. "I got it custom from an old employer. It runs way faster than Yasakas; it's meant to outlast and outfight them."

Seija shrugs.

"Not like I care about your stupid fancy rig," she huffs. "Anyway, the gist of it is, we bring down the four corporations and their AIs. We get a job with one of them, and then-- _wait_ , I need some paper--" she grabs a notebook from the stack of books on her desk corner-- "--okay, so we get an intel run done on Yakumo for the sake of, letsay, Eientei. I developed this virus file a while ago. It hides in cyberspace and lies latent for up to six months," at this she makes a scribbled note of the file and its structure-- "and I can generate any authentic origin tag for it. We say it's associated with Eientei servers, and plan is we drop it somewhere into the data archives of Yakumo, point the blame back at Eientei for the damage it does to the files, and wait for shit to go down.

"Eventually, we'll find a job for Yakumo, as retaliation. We go into Eientei servers, drop the footprint, get the job done, and then get the hell out of there. I can delete our names and identities from their servers. Basically, we're causing the pillars of our puppet government to destroy each other so we don't have to." Seija finishes the note with a crude spiral diagram, tracing lines between Yakumo, Eientei, Chireiden, and '?' with quick and messy strokes. "That's how it works. You should check out the file."

"If you can send me it--"

"Nah," Seija says, "just watch." And she hooks the cable behind her ear, and buzzes in, thrown directly into a deep and chilly blackness.

 

* * *

 

She waits, but Nue's beside her in a flash, sideswept hair prickling in the cold, liquid darkness. Seija nods in quiet recognition. Nue does a couple of backflips, and then floats absentmindedly around for a bit before Seija gets the chat system working.

> **xboxdestroyer101:** we good?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** what the fucks that chathandle **  
> xboxdestroyer101:** oh, shit. let me change that **  
> xboxdestroyer101 is now HeianAlien!  
>  HeianAlien:** left it up from a previous job. i have this weird handle changer program. it’s a little thingy that changes my handle to the name of the 143rd passerby you saw last time you logged in. it looks different to everyone. **  
> inverse-monarchy:** what i wanna know is where was i that i passed by some dumb xbox player. youre like 12 you shouldnt be in the medium **  
> HeianAlien:** can’t stop the uprising, man. they might be the next big revolutionary. ****  
> inverse-monarchy: like fuck they will with a handle like that

Nue sticks her tongue out. Seija sighs, inaudibly, and faces Hellwards.

> **inverse-monarchy:** so find me a node and ill shwo you what it does  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** *show  
>  **HeianAlien:** damn, kijin, i knew what you meant the first time. **  
> inverse-monarchy:** stfu and find me a node

She winks. _Winks!_ And then dives straight down, into blackness. The throbbing veins of data highways trace upwards from here, and all the light is above them. The further Nue falls, the darker and more red everything turns; all the sparkling data is dyed in blood-red halflight, and Seija’s frustration melts away as she feels the artificial wind separate each individual strand of her hair, the free-falling thrill of the digital underworld. 

She always gets like this, going Hellwards; down here everything is limitless and intimidating and everything has teeth. She’s weightless, formless, just data, algorithms of youkai DNA contorting in space, something fragile and breakable, and the danger in Hell amps up all her senses by a multiplier of ten, making things buzz and flow and every movement she makes so much more important. Seija lives for this, for the adrenaline, for the unknown. Her lack of form makes everything she feels more intense, since there’s only a brain and a heart to absorb the experiences, no skin blocking the emotional responses. She lets out an involuntary whoop, and Nue floats downwards towards a red, ice-covered node.

> **HeianAlien:** good?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** let me get the ice off it

Seija scrapes away at the traps, mind buzzing with riddle answers and possibilities. Probability swirls and visualizes, usually formless concepts become visible here in the suspended airs of the Medium. With practiced ease she swipes down on a line of code, eats away at it with her own algorithms. Nue watches the ice melt.

Two minutes later she nods to Nue, and presses the document she’s holding against the freed red glassy surface. The virus, like everything else, is visible. It comes as a piece of paper, with a footprint design on the front. Holding it to the node, she motions to Nue to back away.

> **inverse-monarchy:** ok im gna tell it when it has to blow up and it will  
>  **HeianAlien** : you can make it do that?  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : yea it starts working when i tell it to, i have remote command over it too

Seija speaks out a few commands. They’re absorbed into the thick darkness, but they seem to have been accepted by something, as just thirty seconds later the node bursts open and outwards, jagged glass edges spraying out around it, threads of sensitive data spiraling up like wisps of smoke from the inside. Nue starts to clap. Seija carefully pulls the information out from the broken glass, holds it straight out in front of her.

> **HeianAlien:** anything important?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** wasnt rly expecting anythign since this was a test run but its mostly employer records from some old company before the schism  
>  **HeianAlien:** i have a feeling we could probably use those! do you have a personal archive or whatever?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** yea its up back in my apt spawn point ill bring it up there  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** any questions  
>  **HeianAlien:** nope!  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** ok im buzzin out once i get back up there you can do that whenever just come up soon  
>  **HeianAlien:** whatever you say  >)  
>  **inverse-monarchy has disconnected!**
> 
>  

* * *

 

Seija sits straight up, in meatspace, her mind spinning. There’s excitement in her chest, fast-paced and throbbing. She looks around, waits for Nue to buzz out; Nitori’s still in bed, though her face has stopped looking quite so pale and she looks to be sleeping well. There’s a change, coming through the distance as clouds; it rings in the air with a hum, like the wind on a mountain before a storm. Alive and thrumming with electricity, she feels it coming up over the hill, and just then Nue sits up, disconnecting and stretching backwards in an impressive yawn.

“Took you long enough,” Seija grumbles, as Nue slumps over her own knees and makes another long yawning sound.

“I just haven’t been Hellwards in a while, is all,” Nue retaliates lightly. “Most of my work’s been around the Village, which is why I got so excited. And don’t tell me you weren’t too!”

“Was not,” Seija says, under her breath.

“Liar.”

“I’m not that naive.”

“Don’t deny it. I saw you!”

“Shut _up_ \--"

Seija knocks Nue’s chair over. She falls to the concrete floor, bracing her head with her hands, and starts laughing. Seija follows her, snarling and pushing against her hands, and soon they’re in a deadlock, scuffling aimlessly on the floor, tugging each other around-- Nue is laughing, and Seija stops growling and starts grinning instead, and they’re tussling over the headphones Nue dropped on the floor before a sudden noise snaps Seija out of it and Nitori is sitting upright, eyes closed, on the bed.

“Oh,” Seija stammers, and gets up, brushes herself off. She never realized how much dust is on her floor-- her back has nearly gone grey with it-- and Nue stands up as well, straighter than usual, blinking obliviously. Seija clenches her teeth, hands Nue her headphones and her rig, and nods stiffly as the smaller youkai turns and waves to her at the door.

“Thanks,” Nue says. Seija scowls, looks down at her feet. 

“Yeah,” she replies, more a grunt than an actual word, but as the door slides closed and the auto-lock mechanism does its metallic click, she drops her hands to her sides and keeps looking, through the peephole, watching Nue’s shadow fade into the dark hallway.

The thrumming energy disappears from the room. Seija puzzles over this for a while until she realizes: Nue took it with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao spot the trans character
> 
> (actually seija and nue are both trans and it's not even a plot point, you can't tell me anything)


	4. launch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The operation on Yakumo begins.

Seija has done well for herself, before the actual mission; she's taken her time spreading the word, making herself known in the government cyberdistricts as high-profile and willing to take potentially fatal jobs, everything that one of the corporate monoliths would want in a hacker mercenary. Of course, she does expect it to take some time, and she predicts zero hour will be a month or so away-- which is why, exactly three days and five hours after she finishes setting up in the medium, she is so taken aback when she gets a job offer from Eientei.

It's all bureaucratic language, the pretentious shit Seija despises, and it makes her lips curl in distaste just from reading it-- but she has a job. _They have a job!_ And this is going to be the first step in a long campaign, the ripple in the still pond that causes a wave of revolution. She's one step closer!-- so the taste of satisfaction and excitement in her mouth overrides any of the disgust she felt from the emails. Immediately, Seija scrambles up to her feet, grabs her phone, opens the chat client.

Nue is probably online, just invisible, so she tests it out first just in case. The ping echoes through the darkened room.

> **inverse-monarchy** : hey are you here or do i gotta track you down

It takes a minute-- during which Seija puzzles over if she should have just gone downstairs after all-- for Nue to respond.

> **HeianAlien** : no need! i'm right here, champ > )  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : why do you call me that i dont get it  
>  **HeianAlien** : i do this with everyone! get used to it, kijin.  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : ffs

Seija sighs, flops onto the rickety mattress. She's already a bit irritated, but this is different; Nue seems to like getting a rise out of her, and what's more, she enjoys it herself. In some weird, un-amanojaku-like way: Nue tells her she only does this to people she likes, so she should be kind of angry, right? That Nue would like her, she's supposed to hate that. But it's almost satisfying.  
It's harmless banter, she recognizes, and shrugs it off for now. Not a big deal.

> **HeianAlien:** anyway, what did you want to tell me? you only message me when you've got news so  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** why else would i msg you tho. and yea. we got news  
>  **HeianAlien:** oh, shut up. tell me already!  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** i got us a job for eientei

A pause. Then, the signature "HeianAlien is typing..." and Seija finds herself on the balls of her feet rocking back and forth as she awaits the answer.

> **HeianAlien** : YYYYYYYYYYYTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!! YES YES YES!!!!! FUCKIN YEAH!!!!!!

Seija stifles a barking laugh. It's so ridiculously off-kilter, so unmistakably Nue. She's typing faster than before.

> **inverse-monarchy** : you sound hyped  
>  **HeianAlien** : fuck yea i am! hype train leavin the station! ALL ABOARD  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : houjuu you better be actually serious about this job or ill kill you  
>  **HeianAlien** : don't get me wrong i'm serious as hell! i'm just so fucking excited you have no idea  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : im glad for that? i guess  
>  **HeianAlien** : you better be! anyway, when's zero hour, what do we need for prep, how much are we getting paid, danger level, uhh what should i bring? snacks?  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : jfc  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : lemme send you the thing i got from eientei  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : as for snax i think i just want a fuckin clif bar  
>  **HeianAlien** : roger that.

Seija logs off, then writes a reply to the email-- it's got to be one of the most contrived emails she's ever had to do, mainly because her vocabulary doesn't quite fit with the sort of diplomatic language that's used in these sort of interactions. A good thirty minutes later, she hears a distinctive ping from her email client, and reads through the reply about four times. After a little puzzling and a lot of data refining, she makes a quick rundown of the mission in an open note on her phone. It goes something like this:

>   
> _ \- Eientei drops us off at zero hour in Mayohiga _   
> _ \- Building is only visible in cyberspace so we get in through the medium, on buzzout we’ll be inside the building _   
> _ \- Purpose is the stock data/passwords located in Yakumo, they mainly concern Eientei _   
> _ \- I browse around digitally, get through protective ice, locate the files, Nue does meatspace damage control/drops anyone that tries to get in our way _   
> _ \- We get the files, make sure not to cross the AI, I hack in and make a remote copy of the files for safekeeping in our own archive, we don’t open the ones we’re giving to Eientei _   
> _ \- On our way out I drop the footprint _   
> _ \- Profit???? _   
> _ \- Yeah like more than 200k if we survive that is _   
> 

She protects the file, then sends it to Nue, an excitement prickly and growing in her stomach. The phrase “if we survive that is” resonates with her, somehow-- she’s not sure if that means she’s determined to get out alive, or that she wants, somehow, to die.

 

* * *

 

 

Two before zero hour, Nue meets her at her apartment, carrying the promised Clif bars in the pocket of a black and red patterned hoodie. She’s wearing striped skintight leggings (red and blue, mismatched as usual) and sneakers otherwise, and her wings are poking out from the holes in the back of the sweater. She pulls at her beanie, somewhat nonchalantly.

“We got time to plan, I guess,” she yawns, falling backward onto Seija’s bed, which emits a pained-sounding creak as she sinks into the mattress. “I got the list, uhh, what should I bring in terms of weapon?”

“Preferably something non-lethal. Uhh, maybe check what your rounds are, if they’re synaptic you should be fine. Either that or regulars in case shit really goes wrong.”

“I can bring both?”

“Yeah, sure, let’s just go with that.” Seija yanks open one of her desk drawers, rifles through it to pull out a box of ammunition. “Take the blue ones and the black ones but load the blue ones first, make sure you don’t kill anyone unless absolutely necessary.”

“Right.” Nue nods, flipping open the lid of the box and inserting a cartridge into the pistol she has holstered at her hip. “Hey, how are you going to deal with security cameras?”

“I can jam the communications, although they’ll probably figure out that something’s going on... if that happens I’ll need you for backup. Preferably, we want to make it look like this never happened. That means no casualties and no big explosions, I don’t wanna deal with that shit,” Seija drawls. She kicks the filing cabinet closed, locks it with a swipe of her finger. Her body feels light, almost immaterial, like she’s perfectly in control of every movement. _Good,_ she thinks. _Control is what I want._ Ever since Seija first slipped into the world of cyber-anarchy and revolutionaries, she’s had a fascination, an obsession with being the master of her own body and mind. She has refused to accept her limitations, punched straight through them like flimsy cardboard, and has developed her own abilities so keenly that now if there are any mistakes on a job, they’re guaranteed not to be hers.

Nue groans from the back of her throat. “Aww, but I like explosions,” she fake-pouts, swinging around quick to face Seija.

“Explosions will come later,” Seija assures her, before tweaking the dials on her headset. From here she can buzz in quietly and efficiently, her rig set up against her body in the hidden pockets of her windbreaker. “I actually had no idea that the entrance to meatspace Yakumo was in cyberspace. I always thought that was kinda weird, since Yakumo does a lot of shit openly, they’d be all cloistered and hidden like that...”

“I bet if any other AI ran it, it’d be a different story,” Nue shrugs. “The Ancient pulls shit like that all the time. And at the last minute too.”

“Speaking of, aren’t Aya and Hatate going up to the Netherworld this week too?”

Nue is agape. “What? I thought Aya swore off that project.”

“Yeah, I did too,” Seija admits, brushing some dust off her upper arm. “But she’s had enough of moping around. I bet they’ll come back with something or other. They’re the closest to the truth about the fourth AI, and fuck if they don’t get it before they die.”

“That’s kind of a scary way to put it,” Nue says. She starts to shapeshift, then-- Seija’s never seen her really do it, but it’s fascinating and somewhat gruesome, to see her body distort, grow taller, changing the color and length of her hair. Seija looks away, and the next time she sees Nue, the usually short winged youkai has become a tall, brown-haired tengu-looking girl-- only for a second, though, before she wavers back into her original form. “Sorry,” she adds. “You’ll see me as me. Just gotta make sure no one else does. My form changes depending on the person.”

Seija shrugs, finally clipping her pistol to her hip belt, and stretches upwards. “It’s the truth of the business,” she answers. “Alright, it takes us an hour from here-- maybe?-- to get to Eientei. They’re going to drop us off in Mayohiga by the next hour. Zero hour is at exactly 02:00 AM. We get the job done before 05:00 when the actual non-automated security staff takes over, and we’re good to go. Any questions?”

“Are we going to make it?”

Seija looks to the side, then wipes her brow with the back of her hand. She hadn’t even noticed she was sweating. “The odds are slightly on our side. That doesn’t mean it’ll be a sure show. But hey,” she says, and a new energy bubbles up in her heart-- they’re going to _do it_. They’re going to go in there, fuck shit up, and start bringing down the pillars, one by fucking one.

“We can live cowards or die rebels. And I dunno about you, but I don’t wanna fight a battle I know I’m gonna win.”

 

* * *

 

 

They arrive at Eientei right on time, and are escorted into a meeting room, sat between two guards facing the head of the table. A flickering sort of mirage, sitting in the great chair, but the form turns quickly solid, less hologram, more skin and bones. Seija looks on, and feels her body go numb with the thrill. _That’s her,_ she thinks, in a fit of adrenaline. _That’s her, the commanding AI_.

“Welcome to Eientei,” the woman says, a gentle and powerful low voice. Seija recognizes it as the voice of someone wise, influential, and dangerous. “I hope you have made preparations?”

“We have,” Seija says, nodding. Her fingers curl into the hem of her shirt; this presence is so strong, so electrifying.

“Very well. I am the entity running this corporation, known as the Lunarian. I hope you know that this is a high-profile job, and failure almost certainly means death, so I came in person to go over it with you.” She twists a lock of silver hair around a perfectly manicured finger. Her smile is red and sharp as stained glass. “The risk is great; the reward is even greater. Information you bring back to us is not part of your reward, however, and if there is any damage done to the files I will not hesitate to terminate you immediately, no matter how well the operation goes.”

“Understood,” comes Seija’s voice from her throat. It’s stable and consistent, much unlike her state of mind right now; her heart is throbbing so hard against her ribcage that it threatens to break. Just _looking_ at the Lunarian is unsettling-- such a sophisticated array of code and responses, it doesn’t even seem mechanical at all. The way she moves, slowly and languidly, her undistorted voice and measured words: none of these are characteristics of any artificial intelligence Seija has ever encountered before. Small gestures, her cadence firm and varied. It’s like-- and Seija thinks this with complete horror in her heart-- she was _alive_ once.

“Security personnel will escort you to the drop location in Mayohiga now. We expect only the best,” the Lunarian says, and waves as Seija and Nue stand up and walk through the door.

 

* * *

 

 

Rain mingles in double helixes on the windows of the car, as Seija stares out and into the city. Flashing neon lights, red brake signals in front of them, all bring color to the streaks of rainwater on the tinted glass. Nue is saying nothing, looking down at her thumbs. Seija can feel her nerves from across the cushioned seats; she’s not much better, either. Her ears are burning at the tips, a sure sign of stress, and her fingers are shaking the slightest bit. She watches as the cityscape blurs into cones and rods of motion, colors like melting wax all down her vision. Her hands are numb, her eyes rapidly blinking. She is moving. She is _ready_.

The car pulls to a stop at the corner of Hakurei and 71st, and the automatic doors open. Seija stands up, pulls her jacket over her shoulders. Nue comes around from the other side, stands next to her in the rain. Her hand, mostly covered in her sleeve, brushes Seija’s ever so lightly-- whether purposefully or accidentally, she can’t tell, but it’s somewhat reassuring.

They sit down, together, under the awning of an old closed-down antique shop. The rain pounds above them, but only drops fall now on Seija’s shoes, sticking out slightly from under the shelter. Nue waits for the security car to drive off, and then strings the jack behind her ear. Seija does this as well, their practiced, timed movements almost synchronized. It brings stability, calm to the process.

Nue pulls her hood up, turns her head to Seija.

“Are you ready?” Seija asks, her voice a firm whisper over the sound of the rain.

“I’m ready,” Nue affirms. And, as one, in perfect synchronicity, they pull the connector towards the jack. Seija hesitates, but only for a stuttering half-second before she presses hard down, and then-- _then_ \-- she’s flying.

 

 


	5. mobility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yakumo, from the inside.

And then, silence.

The clamor of the streets-- trucks speeding and screeching on the slippery roads, shouts and songs, the raucous chanting of drunk youkai outside the bar-- dissolves as easily as melting butter. Seija feels her body weight disappear, and the thrill runs through her, the feeling she gets before any fall. Nue follows, carves an opening through the thick darkness, digging her nails into the edges of the walls for stability. The cyberspace night throbs in specks of neon and oceans of black.

Seija sees Nue’s lips moving, pointing toward a shape in the near distance. The outline of a door, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the darkness, and Seija has to squint to see it-- Nue’s eyes are sharp, pointed scanners, watchful and more dangerous in the dark. Seija signals to Nue to bring up the chat client.

> **inverse-monarchy** : seriously houjuu how do you even see that shit  
>  **HeianAlien** : nue eyes, motherfucker. pity a lil amanojaku like you don’t have them  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : stfu or ill fuckin cut yr throat  
>  **HeianAlien** : whoa.

Seija huffs, turns her attention away from the chat client to pull up another program. They’re heading straight towards the door in the wall, and Nue leans forward as she falls, the space around them twisting and warping. Seija watches Nue from behind, how she loops around herself in flight, her body even more lithe and form distorting in midair, and a tiny ball of jealousy wells up in her throat. She swallows it down, as they reach the door-- there are more important things to worry about.

A pinging, from her chat window.

> **HeianAlien** : okay the Lunarian gave me data on two of the corp workers we can masquerade as to get in, but you can just mask your presence with shit right?  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : yeah your the only one who has to shapeshift or w/e  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : *you’re  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : gdi

She gives up on the typos (Nue is smiling evilly, and she can almost hear her from the soundlessness in the medium) and starts wrapping herself in the fabric she spins. Here in cyberspace viruses have forms, proxies are clothes, cloaks you can pull around yourself and disappear in. She shrugs on the sheer fabric-- of course, there’s no weight or sensation to it, just a sudden loss of self-perception.

> **inverse-monarchy** : jfc i forgot how weird this feels  
>  **HeianAlien** : ahaha.  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : its like you dont know where your body is all of a sudden and you freak out for like half a second like where the fuck are my feet?  
>  **HeianAlien** : i would ask to try it on, but we have better things to do.  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : seriously what the fuck happende to my fucki g feet

Nue makes a shrugging motion, then turns back to the door. It’s barely visible, save for a faintly glowing purplish outline around the seal of the doorframe. Seija watches as Nue’s body distorts, dissolves into pixels and reassembles, and she can’t help but gape every time she witnesses it-- shapeshifting is so weird, she thinks. She hasn’t known any other way to conceal her identity and actions other than the proxies, and being able to shed an identity like a snakeskin and step fluidly into a new one is still so fascinating. She wonders if this is just a nue thing, or a Nue thing.

Nue finishes transforming, and then presses her thumb to the scanner. A series of blips echoes in the darkness, sounding so far away. With a gesture of frustration, she opens her eye wide and faces the tiny device in the door. A retina scan? Not just that, Seija thinks-- a literal cyber DNA scan. Nue gets away with it, though, flying colors. She holds the door and Seija follows, into a violet light.

> **HeianAlien** : okay, the Lunarian told me to buzz out when we see the metal detectors, which are... right there. you’re staying in the medium, you can track my shadow while i’m walking in meatspace. uh, what else? oh, she said to crack all the doors before i try to go in, they do some weird virus shit in cyberspace that carries over to meatspace which can basically kill you when you walk in so... don’t kill me  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : cant promise you anything but ill try  
>  **HeianAlien** : i’ll hold you to that, kijin! now go!

Nue buzzes out, leaving Seija floating alone in the sea of data. Suddenly, she feels lonely, inexplicably and utterly lonely. Her fists clench, one after the other, and she sees Nue’s shadow move up to where the scanners are. They’re shaped similarly to the ones in meatspace, but she can see the code work from here, and knows all the patterns; it’s not just a metal detector, it’s an identity scan that they pass off as just regular security. The data scrambles, searching for a match as Nue’s shadow slips through the scanner-- Seija is half-afraid to even _look_ \-- but a pleased chime from the code, and Nue slides through. Seija carves an opening, hammers through the ice around the door.

> **HeianAlien** : ok this one needs security clearance of 2 before you can get through, this means you probably need to figure out what the clearances entail...?  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : i came ready for this i dug up databases  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : i can attach the clearance tags to you, anythign below 2 gets hit w a neurotoxin  
>  **HeianAlien** : damn. yakumo is kinda intimidating.  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : ive heard eientei is worse abt the neurotoxins tho they have all the medical shit  
>  **HeianAlien** : noted. can you crack the security from up there or do you have to throw me the clearance?  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : i got it from here but by level 4 its gna be safer just to give you the thing

Seija’s gloved hands start to dismantle the strings of code. It’s a simple enough line-- clearance check, if unsatisfactory it goes straight to the air systems which are basically all over the room, satisfactory it goes through, but the code is so open and unprotected that it’s almost laughable. Seija picks them apart with nimble fingers and leaves the connecting tag hanging open so she can close it back up later.

Then she remembers something, and her heart drops.

> **inverse-monarchy** : shit houjuu can you wai tthere i gotta deal w the security systems>>??  
>  **HeianAlien** : fuck. okay let me just  
>  **HeianAlien** : you know what  
>  **HeianAlien** : okay.  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : dont make that face ill be w you in a moment, pissbaby  
>  **HeianAlien** : did you just call me a pissbaby??? WOW kijin that is GOLD  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : QUIT YR WHINING AND HIDE FFS

Nue darts behind a desk. Seija near-screams in frustration, and pores through walls of ice to get to the security cameras. Some of it is beyond her grasp, at the moment: she can disable the cameras now, but she doesn’t have the means to delete the data already recorded just yet. She makes a mental note to do the job quickly so she can get back early enough to take out the footage.

She runs her fingers down a strand of code, parts it with her fingernail. She can feel blood inside her gloves, and notices that the ice here is built to cut, to leave incriminating material. _It got through my glove, but_ , Seija reassures herself, _my blood isn’t ice_ , and she will leave no trace even if her hands are mutilated by the time she gets out.

> **inverse-monarchy** : ow ok im done we can go  
>  **HeianAlien** : that took you like 40 seconds  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : time passes slower in the medium  
>  **HeianAlien** : no it doesn’t! it passes faster doesn’t it!  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : lmao

Seija does a couple of midair turns, gleefully, before she hovers back in place again.

> **inverse-monarchy** : ok ill take you thru this gate  
>  **HeianAlien** : clearance level?  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : 3 so i can dismantle it too its just the 4+ we need to worry abt  
>  **HeianAlien** : roger

She watches Nue’s shadow stand before the gate, then darts above it and starts to focus in. This one has more security, so it’s a little more complicated to get into, but once the ice is gone it should be just as easy to deactivate. She pricks her fingers on the ice again, feels warm blood drip in the webbing of her hands. Quietly, she tightens the straps around her wrists, and presses her hands together before she sets herself back to work.

It takes her a little longer, because this ice has a bit of a mind game going for it, and she undoes one trap to find that it circles back on itself into a loop of code. Seija takes this as a challenge, and grins wickedly, thrusts her hands hard into the opening of the loop. The pain rips through her arms, and she bites down on her lip, but she’s pulling out the trap from the inner workings of the code and then-- with a shatter of glass, it falls away.

This one’s gonna take some work to fix. Seija adds another mental note to her lists of things to leave time for.

> **inverse-monarchy** : ok thats a go, the next two doors to the records room are 4 and 5 respectively so we might have some trouble, get in the elevator next  
>  **HeianAlien** : that took like... twice as long  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : good, bc the code was 8 times as complicated  
>  **HeianAlien** :

Nue leaves the text box blank, then grins-- Seija can feel it from her shadow-- and raises a playful middle finger. Seija nearly hits her own face.

> **HeianAlien** : fuck you, kijin  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : not now   
> **inverse-monarchy** : later mb  
>  **HeianAlien** : !

With that, Nue turns quick on her heels and marches herself through the gate. Seija counts this as a small victory, and follows Nue’s shadow into the elevator. A quick look through the cubic room reveals that even the elevator tracks history, and Seija half-laughs.

> **inverse-monarchy** : wait for like 30 sec after you get out this elevator tracks ppl who travel in it so i gotta do the thing  
>  **HeianAlien** : okay

The door opens to the fifth floor, and Seija drifts into the elevator shaft. It only takes a few pulls and switches before she has that cracked wide open-- no one remembers to protect the elevator history, of all things-- and she takes out the last travel and leaves the tag unsealed just like before. While it’s like this, nothing will be recorded. She darts out of the shaft and follows Nue’s quiet walk to the clearance door.

> **inverse-monarchy** : im gna drop the tag here, lets see if i can make it into an actual file  
>  **HeianAlien** : would it be easier if i just buzzed back in to pick it up?  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : that sounds a lil better tbh get in here

Nue’s form appears above her, the look on her face just as irreverent and mischievous as always. She sticks out her tongue, and Seija hands her a string of code.

> **inverse-monarchy** : put that in yr pocket its basically a clearance card  
>  **HeianAlien** : sick

\--And just like that, she’s gone, simply a shadow again. Seija watches with bated breath as Nue’s shadow faces the door-- _what if she had coded it wrong? what if it was a different clearance card? what if it didn’t work, and Nue’s brains would get blown out?_ \--She doesn’t want Nue to get her brains blown out--

Nue slides through the door.

Seija sighs, harder and deeper than she’s probably ever done before, and follows her closely, protectively, into the documents room. There, she floats just as awed as Nue stands, looking up, and up, and up. The mountains of data, millions of archives scaling up to an unplaceable ceiling, all purple and flashing and dark, vaults covered in glimmering thick ice, a tower of data that reaches the sky.

Seija doesn’t even know where to look.

As if answering her question, a ping from her chat client.

> **HeianAlien** : the Lunarian said the data she needs is in data files ETR-100 through 110. the place is set up like a grid, X is length Y is width and Z is depth, so that would be in row E column T floor R  
>  **HeianAlien** : it just takes a fly up there in the medium and they’re all labeled, the files are in capsules that are stored in huge vaults like the ones you’re seeing right now  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : oh right, im laying out the grid and it makes sense  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : there are 26 levels then i guess  
>  **HeianAlien** : yeah it’s basically just a 26x26x26 cube  
>  **inverse-monarchy** : shit  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** kinda looks cool as hell tho  
>  **HeianAlien** : you ready? you can drop the files

Seija takes a moment to survey her surroundings. Endless streams of ones and zeros, packed together in tight capsules of data, sealed in huge glimmering safelike vaults, secrets she’s probably never been able to comprehend. A warehouse of mysteries, quiet and darkly lit, and there’s absolutely nothing to stop her.  
 _Nothing_ , Seija thinks gleefully, _nothing at all._

> **inverse-monarchy** : aight lets do this shit

And they rocket upwards, in perfect parity-- Seija drifts along Nue’s shadow, something strangely material to her now-- head to head grinning, fists hard, minds ready, eyes and bodies filled with fire.

 


	6. fluoresce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The operation on Yakumo goes smoothly, and a tragedy strikes a pair of tengu reporters.

Seija had forgotten until now what it was like to be totally, completely unattached.

No strings holding her back, no weight on her bones, absolutely liberated from her body and from her responsibility. She has no gravity-- the medium feels endless, boundaries fading out lightyears away somewhere, the distant walls of cyberspace echoing her heartbeat. Effortlessly upwards, alongside Nue’s silhouette, Seija ascends, watching the layers of vaults as she searches.

Nue finds it before she does-- those goddamn eyes, Seija thinks enviously-- the entrance to floor R, where the vault doors line up one after the other. Seija watches her shadow point in, towards the left, gesturing wildly. Nue looks as excited as ever, and she doesn’t even need to see her face to know-- just like Seija, she gets her thrills from being _useful_ , from unlocking something no one else can, from doing something so difficult that just cracking the surface would be an accomplishment for most. Seija nods, briefly, and pulls up the chat client.

> **inverse-monarchy:** yea so  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** are we goin in or what?  
>  **HeianAlien:** hold on just a second!!!!  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** jfc what did you do this time  
>  **HeianAlien:** i didn’t do anything! except i think i might have hurt a wing

Seija’s jaw drops. She never heard of _this_  kind of problem. Sure, Nue’s a bit frail-looking, but she’s also strong as fuck, and there’s never been any notice of her wings taking damage-- aren’t they immaterial or something? or fix themselves automatically, since Nue's a shapeshifter? She quirks an eyebrow upward, thinking it over.

> **inverse-monarchy:** which part of it?  
>  **HeianAlien:** it’s the center arrow one dunno why...  
>  **HeianAlien:** i can still fly though.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** tough it out we can fix it when we get back  
>  **HeianAlien:** fine but if i get shot down or some shit you’re taking the blame for my death, kijin!!!!

An involuntary frown crosses Seija’s face. She blinks, wondering where on Earth that throb of pain in her chest came from. Probably nothing, she convinces herself, and just doesn’t respond.

As she takes a cursory glance back at Nue’s shadow, she notices-- her wings are drooping. There it is, she thinks helplessly, it’s back again.

 

* * *

 

The feeling in Seija’s gut still won’t quit, and it’s distracting. Even as she’s clawing her way through security traps (the entrance to floor R column T was protected by a layer of ice as thick as her shoulders are wide, which, of course, meant that there’s something good behind there) the nagging feeling won’t go away. Seija focuses on the work, imagines narrowing her thoughts into the eye of a needle.

  
When she fumbles with the security on the first vault, and a trap closes on her index finger, she yelps into the void. _That’s it,_ she thinks, and pulls her hand out, shaking the pain off. Her gloves are less bloody than last time, which is a plus, but she’s trembling now, excess energy that refuses to be channeled. She sends Nue a message before she buzzes out.

> **inverse-monarchy:** hey im gna buzz out real quick to pop a red  
>  **HeianAlien:** dude get it together!!!! we gotta do this on the DOUBLE  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** idk whats goin on im just not focused enough ive been stuck on this loop of code and looking somewhere else for five minutes  
>  **HeianAlien:** that ain’t like you.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** listen im buzzin out i need a red and i need it now

One of Seija’s greatest vices is her habit of doing drugs while she hacks. She recognizes that if she had never started, she would probably be so much more stable, but they admittedly improve her performance, so she keeps a bubble pack in her inside pockets whenever she does a job. The reds-- uppers-- keep her from drifting off, and can often help her untangle code that requires painstaking attention to detail. If she’s too focused, she can forget about the big picture, which is what the blues are for. Now whenever shit gets distracting, she can eliminate that threat in a couple of minutes, but it’s hard to obtain that intense focus without them.

She blinks out, opening her eyes-- the light in the warehouse is ultraviolet, almost as ambient as it is in the medium. It startles her a bit, and when she turns around to pull the bubble pack out of her pocket, she sees Nue.

For real this time, in the flickering violet light. She’s in color, albeit faded, and her deep red eyes are reflecting so much light that isn’t even there, like laser pointers severing the darkness. Her wings twitch, the red knifelike appendages stretching out threateningly, as she looks off into some other distance. Something Seija’s not seeing, something she’s never been able to see. Her profile against the ambient blacklights is sharp, cut into the scenery like a paper silhouette.

There’s something so puzzling about Nue, she thinks. How she was so willing to go along with Seija. How childish she is in their conversations, like she’s just messing around in cyberspace with a _friend._ Seija’s never had a friend before, besides Nitori, and Nitori’s not around enough to even count. Nue is-- the first person Seija doesn’t really want to hate; she’s so charming in a hugely frustrating way, and it’s almost impossible to imagine herself _not_  being ticked off by the careless things she says, but for some reason the usually instinctive hatred response in amanojaku doesn’t really work on Nue. She’s playful, irreverent, but somehow also pointed and dangerous as hell, like she could punch a hole through your forehead with her index finger. Her movements are so sharp, so quick, the light sliding off the edge of a knife when you hold it to a lamp. Precise, poised, and terrifying.

Seija ends up buzzing back in without taking her ryth at all.

 

* * *

 

When she finally cuts through the last trap in the ice over the last vault, Seija lets out a whoop of satisfaction. Her fingers are aching, joints becoming stiff, and her mind is repeating lines of code that she doesn’t even need to remember, but she breaks through and rips it out and nearly breaks her back trying to open the heavy door. Nue’s shadow follows her, clinging to the side of the pounded metal, slipping inside the well-lit vault without a sound.

Seija tugs open the files, pulls out pages and pages of documentation. It’s all condensed words to her right now, and she can’t think of anything but _(void printarray (int arg[], int length) { for (int n=0; n <length; ++n)_ so she organizes them in piles of ten and opens a storage box, unzips the darkness to make room. Numbly, she presses the papers into the bottom of the box, closes the lid with one solid stroke, and watches as Nue pulls out her phone.

> **inverse-monarchy:** you got em?  
>  **HeianAlien:** yeah!!!! where are you gonna leave the footprint file!!!!  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** probably in floor C, nowhere around here, i dont wanna be too obv about eientei gettin in here  
>  **HeianAlien:** you gonna leave that ice cracked like that?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** i guess not i can try to piece it back just gotta follow my footsteps  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** time check  
>  **HeianAlien:** 4:38am  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** shit

This time, Seija’s involuntary memory comes in handy-- she remembers every syllable, every meaningless-looking operator as she splices back together the lines of code. She gently resets the traps, twists the strings of variables, creates the layer of hazards that coated the outside. Although it won’t be exactly the same when trying to untangle it, it looks so similar from the surface that no one would be able to tell. She finishes up, tying a string to its source, and shakes out her aching hands.

> **inverse-monarchy:** ok we got it im ready for outs  
>  **HeianAlien:** on your way you gotta reconnect the security thingies remember?????  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** yeah yeah ik ik keep up houjuu  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** im stayin buzzed in for now dont wanna take any risks  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** you do what you usually do  
>  **HeianAlien:** roger that!  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** uh, also  
>  **HeianAlien:** ?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** hows yr wing?  
>  **HeianAlien:**  
>  **HeianAlien:** a bit better  
>  **HeianAlien:** thanks for checking up on me !!

Stunned for a brief moment, Seija only nods to that, then shoots downwards, footprint file in hand; on the way down, she presses the paper to the security gate outside floor C, grinning widely. It disappears after two seconds, and Seija nods, job done, and follows Nue down to the entry floor.

 

* * *

 

They’re headed out to the back exit, where they came in three hours ago, and when Seija opens the door she feels a coldness on her skin-- something strangely ethereal, almost mesmerizing, until she buzzes out and realizes it’s still raining.

Outside, the clouded sky is thick with smog, the tiniest hint of illumination from below the Earth attempting to edge its way out. Seija takes a look at Nue’s face, again, in the streetlight; she’s drenched, hood up, wings hidden within the huge sweatshirt she wore in. Quietly, Nue pops a bubble of chewing gum, and then looks up at Seija with a satisfied smile.

“Damn,” is all she says, her cheeks flushed with cold.

“Damn is right,” Seija replies, nodding vaguely. She doesn’t look Nue in the eyes, but she doesn’t really need to.

 

* * *

 

_you're more daring this time-- there, in the netherworld, buzzed in sitting on the crumbling columns of the myouren ruins. last time it was from the apartment, but you don't want to think about last time. this is the opportunity, the moment of decision you've waited for-- hatate pined to go back even after she was nearly killed, and when you gathered the resolve to restart the expedition, hatate's smile was so wide it could have cracked the sky._

_this time, you carry a renewed sense of courage, a white-hot flame inside your ribcage. you're flying, next to hatate, through the bends and curves of the labyrinth. there's something ominous about this place, and it's not just the dust that's settled over a ruined meatspace myouren; it's a sense of foreboding, a fog thick and deep, that saturates everything, that makes your heart beat faster, your adrenaline levels shoot up. a strange feeling, something like paranoia-- you're being followed, there's something immaterial here, something watching you, swift and perceptive as light, you're not safe-- but you have always taken fear as a challenge rather than a hurdle._

_hatate looks giddy with suppressed, boiling excitement, distilling into rock-hard resolve in her eyes. you know this look; this is hatate's complete lack of fear for death. a pang of worry bursts at your chest, but you choose to ignore it. she looks so happy, you think, so liberated and fearless, that you forget the danger-- and that's all it takes, before hatate stops abruptly._

_"aya," she whispers, her voice quivering suddenly, "someone is watching us."_

_she's more perceptive than you remember. your body goes cold. the blood rushes directly from your head down the column of your spine, and you feel it too. a presence, something surreal and all-encompassing, behind--_

_"aya!"_

_it's hatate's voice, high-pitched and terrified, the tone she uses when she sees something you don't. you whip around, only to glimpse it before they make contact-- iridescent, glowing metal chains, burning when they touch your skin, dragging you down. your knees hit the ground before you know what's happening, and the pain is real and excruciating. the chains wrap themselves around your chest, your arms, and hot shackles close over your ankles and wrists._

_you start screaming. the links change color, slowly. the presence materializes, and you turn your head painfully to see hatate's wide eyes, half-open mouth as she backs away._

_"holy shit. that's..."_

_your blood runs completely cold. someone stands in front of you, holding the ends of your chains. she's tall, with long cascading hair, and her mouth is tight-lipped but her eyes are wavering. she looks majestic in the fog, a light emanating from her chest._

_"please forgive me," she says, and the echoes of her quiet, gentle voice fall from the labyrinth walls like fruit, "for the pain i am about to cause you."_

_she's turned to hatate as she says this. the aura around her is strong, suffocating. you struggle against your bindings, pushing your body forward against the burning shackles._

no, _you think,_ no, don't you dare go anywhere near hatate, i'll fight tooth and nail for her. _it's all in your thoughts, now, though-- you're chained down to the ruins, and hatate's trembling, her legs are shaking as she backs away. something bright and blinding forms in the apparition's hands._

_"aya," hatate stammers, "that's her. the fourth AI."_

_your heart stops. you don't know how you couldn't see it-- her presence is so commanding, mysterious, uncannily powerful. the light in her hands takes shape. a bow, almost as tall as the AI, pure and glowing._

_"it is necessary that i am not found out. please forgive me, but..."_

_"no," you whisper. "no."_

_"i must do this," she says. another light, from her chest, melding into something long and sharp. an arrow. hatate stops in her tracks, paralyzed. you struggle, strain, shout._

_"i'm sorry."_

_she strings the bow, and aims directly at hatate. you freeze, no longer fighting, and the light flies, a sheer straight beam of it, leaving a retina-searing trail behind as it splits the air and then pierces directly through hatate's ribcage._

 

_you scream. so loud you feel your ears ringing. hatate's eyes shoot open, and a cracked gasp falls from her lips before her knees give out and she collapses, body jerking on the marble floors, the crackling bolt of light still buried in her chest. the AI stares directly into you, and you feel her eyes passing over your desperation, as if taking it in._

_and then, unexpectedly, a tear falls from her cheek. rage bubbles inside you. she has no right to feel bad for you, this entity that killed your other half. hatate. hatate. hatate, she is broken and unmoving and dead. she is dead. she is gone. you jerk the chains, weakly, and you no longer feel them scalding your wrists. she is gone. hatate. hatate._

_her eyes flutter closed, for the last time. the AI brings her palms together. and then-- and then-- light, everywhere, engulfing you, burning every inch of you, you feel your bones break and vanish into ash. hatate. hatate. no. hatate._

_hatate._

_you buzz out._

_she is slumped over her rig, against the wall. between her lungs, a gaping hole, straight through her, blood running down the front of her shirt. her eyes are closed, here, too. she is dead, her strings cut. hatate._

_your whole body burns, from the inside out, scars forming over your bones. hatate is gone. she's not breathing. she's not moving. her heart, too, the wound gapes through it._

_wings broken, breathlessly, you cry._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for more information on the ayahata subplot, read "sudden fall" by cheinsaw! my qp elaborated on the first expedition, and what went so wrong that aya didn't try up until now; their writing on it has become a part of the chasers canon! 
> 
> hatate's only the first one to go... sorry


	7. rescind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aya comes back, and Seija makes some Awful Social Decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am going to hopefully be finishing this fic for nanowrimo this month, so expect more regular updates! unless, of course, i quit nano. then we can go back to the whole "when i fucking feel like it" bullshit
> 
> seija is an asshole and i love her  
> there's also a mother 3 reference in here

Seija ducks out of the operation as casually as if it never happened. While planning for the run on Yakumo, she had been working on a side project— her database prober. One of the scariest parts of working for multiple corporations was the idea of her name lingering in someone else’s database, so before zero hour she uploaded the worm onto some random server in the Bamboo District and set it to run at exactly 5, which is when (she predicted) she would be getting out. It worked well enough, and even though she had to go in and check, it ended up being easier than she thought it would be.

Nue is sitting on the edge of her bed, deep in thought. She’s making the face that she always makes whenever there’s something on her mind, where the corner of her mouth pulls rigidly sideways, apprehensive and skeptical-looking. Her eyes are flashing as she looks over her hands, turning them over and checking the scars between her fingers.

“So,” Seija says, shattering the silence between them. “What now.”

“We wait, I guess,” Nue sighs, then flops down face-first into the pillows. Seija scrambles, pushing her off halfway, before finally sticking a hand on Nue’s face as a subtle _fuck you_. Nue is all over her pillows like she fucking _owns_ the place, and it makes Seija pleasantly enraged— at least, until Nue sticks her tongue out and licks the palm of her hand. Then Seija’s _disgusted._

“Augh! God _damn,_ Houjuu, put your tongue away!” 

Nue rolls over in laughter, loud and shrill. Seija buries her face in the one pillow she has.

“Seriously, though,” she continues. “Never do that again.”

Nue winks, pulls down the skin under her eye, and sticks her tongue out _again._ Seija just sighs, long and impatient, into her pillow.

“You went back to check on the database, right?” comes Nue’s voice from above her.

“Yeah,” Seija monotones, pulling up her laptop from under the bed. “Everything’s all good, probably. And by probably I mean there’s only a small error margin, like zero-point-one percent kinda thing. Can’t you just trust me?”

“Listen, I’m just checking because I don’t wanna get into trouble later when things somehow go to shit. And you know they _will,_ at some point,” Nue explains, kicking her feet. “It just depends on when and also how much shit things go to.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, shut _up,_ ” Seija groans. Her head is starting to hurt, and she buries her face in her pillow to block out the buzzing fluorescent light from above. The sound of bad house music blares from somewhere in the building, echoing up the long, towering shaft. There’s an ache in her chest that drugs don’t seem to fix— she concentrates on the silence between the thumping house beats, listens for the sound of Nue’s breathing. Somehow, it’s comforting. In the gaps between sounds, she is there, sharp-edged and dangerous and whimsical as ever, but now just breathing.

“I wonder what happened to Aya and Hatate,” Nue says, quietly.

“Yeah,” Seija admits. “Me too.”

“Do you know when they’re coming back?”

“I never asked them.”

Nue doesn’t reply, and turns over into the pillow. Her feet have stopped kicking, and Seija’s heart seems stiller, less insistent than usual.

“I’m worried,” comes Nue’s voice, murmured, from somewhere under the covers. Seija doesn’t answer. Instead, she thinks about stars.

 

* * *

 

The next two days consist of regular dives into the medium, in which Seija starts building something much bigger than she started out with. Nue has carved out a corner of cyberspace for their experiments— it’s somewhere Hellwards, around the area where everything starts turning red, but not too deep in, because Seija was worried about the oni coming up and maybe seeing them. Nue helps, sealing off the parameters and double-encrypting the code, while Seija floats around pulling strings of syntax and weaving things together. At this point the project seems to be coming out as some sort of virus, but something not local, something that could light up a quarter of the medium like Christmas Eve. Something terrifying, as a last resort, is her general line of thought here. 

Nue, of course, messes with other things. She picks locks on old databases encrusted by phosphorescent dust, rolls through sheaves of documents, and pranking the occasional passerby. First it was a human, about 16 years old; she flings tiny bombs at them with a slingshot, watches as they panic and buzz out, leaving strings of garbled data behind them. Then it was an amanojaku with a very angry look on his face; she carved a trapdoor under him, watched as he slipped and fell. Seija can hear her cackling from this distance, and it’s almost soothing— background music for a teenage world-destroyer at work, she thinks.

As if on cue, Nue drops into the space from above, giggling harshly at her own escapades. She spins around, circles the partially-complete monolith of a virus, and puts her face up to it, as if examining it.

 

> **HeianAlien:** this is rly cool but what the fuck is this?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** hell if i know. some sort of new yrs bomb or some shit  
>  **HeianAlien:** a new years bomb? aw, cute reference. 

 

Nue spins around, grinning. A bright white fang flashes in the darkness.

 

> **HeianAlien:** we gotta go back to meatspace now though, i gotta talk to nitori.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** for what  
>  **HeianAlien:** ~*~*~reasons.~*~*~  
>  **HeianAlien:** its actually abt the fourth ai project. aya and hatate aren’t back yet, and i wanted to go to a secondary source for it.

 

Seija nods blankly, removes her hands from inside a stubborn loop of code. 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** well  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** no idea where else to go from here so im just gna rocket back up w you  
>  **HeianAlien:** okay!  
>  **HeianAlien:** idk why, i just suddenly got excited about that project…  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** dont get yr hopes up too much idk if nitori knows any more than those two  
>  **HeianAlien:** yeah yeah blah whatever. at any rate, she knows more than i do. so.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** just warnin you

 

She stretches upwards, then lets Nue buzz out first. When everything else goes quiet, she stays, staring at her work, and then turns around quickly, into nothingness.

 

* * *

 

When she gets out, Nue is gone. Seija looks around, confused, before she sits back down on the edge of her bed. There’s something really wrong in the building— the house music has all but faded out, and there’s only a distant chattering in the main shaft, echoing coldly. Seija taps her feet, and then presses her ear to the chilly metal of her door. Outside her room, there’s nothing but whispers, like the buzzing of a crowd before an explosion.

Then it hits her— _Aya and Hatate._ Without thinking she throws the door open. It hits the cinderblock wall, leaving dust under her doorway, and she dashes out, still in her old hoodie with nothing else but her rig and a notebook. There’s something nervewracking about seeing them again; Seija has never really considered them close friends, more like her comrades, but there’s still a sense of trust there, somewhere beyond the bickering and playful teasing and quiet frustrations. So when she runs down two flights of stairs to run straight into Aya on the landing, she freezes in her tracks.

Aya is standing there, not even bothering to say anything. It’s unsettling— usually she’d have a few choice words with Seija, stepping on her foot, teasing her, pulling her ear— but now, Aya is stone-cold, barely even acknowledging the impact. Seija almost grimaces. Then she notices— Aya’s head is down, but under her choppy bangs Seija can see her mascara running, staining the bow of her lip, streaking down her face.

“Jesus, Aya,” Seija says, in a tremulous whisper. “What the fuck happened?” And then she remembers. _Hatate._ “Where’s Hatate?”

Aya raises her head. The look in her eyes, terrified, broken stone, says all Seija needs to know.

“No,” Seija breathes, frozen. “No.”

Aya nods, silently. The echoes fall from the shaft, of someone else climbing the stairs, and suddenly everything feels too sharp in Seija’s vision. She bites her lip, so hard she feels blood run down her chin. It’s nowhere near painful anymore. Aya tilts her head down, and then turns fast on her heel, running up the stairs before Seija can even stop her. Her form fades into the darkness of the stairs, and Seija watches, her mouth still frozen in disbelief.

A droplet of water falls from a rusting pipe overhead. Seija waits till her shadow disappears, and then runs after her.

 

* * *

 

The wait outside Aya’s room is long and cold. Seija sits against the cinderblock wall, peering under the door every so often to see the shadows of two light feet move across the room.   There is no sound from inside, like Aya is deliberately trying to erase her own presence, and Seija pulls out her phone, checks the message client. Nothing yet. Nue was supposed to get back to her at this point, but Seija isn’t really surprised that she hasn’t. She’s always off on her own missions, never really checks in all that often. It makes Seija wonder how she even deals with her, sometimes.

But now there is the issue of Aya, who paces back and forth silently, casting shadows under the door. Aya, who has lost something so integral to her existence that Seija isn’t sure who she is anymore. Aya, in the dark hallway, the sound of her sandals echoing off the walls. Seija tries to approach the door, but as her knuckles near the metal, she stops, draws back quick as if she had been burnt. Her stomach starts aching; she tries to get up, but her legs won’t stabilize from under her body and she slumps instead, helplessly, against the wall.

This isn’t the kind of suffering she likes. This is something much, much different. Seija starts to taste it in her mouth, bitter and unfamiliar; the feeling of loss, for something she never had in the first place. It’s no longer coated by anger, or concealed under necessity. At its core, it’s a burning sadness, with a hard pit of vengeance in the middle. Seija finally stands up, pushes herself back onto her feet, and knocks on the door.

There’s no sound, first. Seija begins to wonder if Aya even noticed. But her footsteps come, light and tentative, and Aya cracks open the heavy door. All that is visible is one tear-stained eye, blackened with mascara smears, and a stray sweep of her bangs. Seija just looks at her, before she opens it another inch or so, and beckons with a nod of her head.

She pauses before stepping in. The short hallway into Aya’s apartment is empty— an old, battered suitcase stands at the step, where the shoes are left. Seija unlaces her boots, keeping her head down, and tugs them off. There’s a mirror on her right; she looks into it and notices that her lipstick is smudged, a bright blood red on the edge of her lips. Shrugging, she rubs it off with the back of her index finger, and looks into her own dull-crimson eyes through the glass. The sound of Aya’s footsteps move forward, but she’s frozen in her tracks, noticing every vein in the whites of her eyes, studying her own reflection. _What did I even come here for,_ she thinks. _What did I think I could say?_

The dragging sound of a wooden chair. Aya turns around, sits down at the dining table, dropping her bag at the legs of the chair. Quietly, Seija pads across the wooden floor in her socks; making too much noise seems taboo, disrespectful. The window is shut, the blinds closed— last time Seija was here, every window was thrown wide open, the barely-visible city sun giving light through the endless clouds, illuminating the glossy floor, the vases of flowers on the tables. Pain, the kind Seija hates, throbs in her gut.

She opens her mouth, then closes it, sitting down across from Aya at the table. The tengu’s eyes are still down, unwilling. Seija has the unusual, awful urge to reach across the table and take Aya’s hand, but it disappears as fast as it came. 

“I’m—” she starts, and then pauses. Aya raises her head, barely even making eye contact, but Seija knows from her half-lit expression that there’s something she’s not telling her. It’s not like her to offer an apology, so Seija redirects her train of thought. “What even happened? Up there, I mean.”

Aya shakes her head, almost unnoticeably, and her eyes focus on Seija’s forehead, in an attempt to avoid looking directly at her. It’s something Seija recognizes very well— it was one of her own strategies, back when she was a kid and everyone expected her to be seen and not heard, to listen and stop talking. Aya’s lips crack open. They look parched, like she hasn’t had a sip of water in days; as her elbows rest on the table, Seija sees that the rest of her is just as neglected. She looks wounded, physically as well, and Seija starts to feel her mouth turn up into a grimace. 

Aya leaves a long silence between them, her lips moving soundlessly as if trying to generate a coherent story. She looks down at her hands every so often, and her wrists look irritated, like something had burned them all the way around. When she looks up, her eyes dart back and forth, almost paranoid. Watching her makes Seija want to cry, a feeling she hasn’t had since she was really little. The tengu looks speechless, traumatized, and Seija feels like she’s getting nowhere; another urge hits her, the urge to get out of this apartment, to push the chair back and run. 

“I can’t,” Aya finally says, her voice as cracked as the burns around her wrists. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t. Okay.”

Seija frowns, narrowing her eyes. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Of course there is,” Aya says, her lips becoming flat in an expression of anxiety. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Is there some sort of great reason? Come _on,_ ” Seija says, her hands tightening into fists on the tabletop. Aya looks scared, eyes flickering to the side.

“Hatate is _gone._ What else do you need to know,” she says, weakly.

“Why. How it happened. I need to know everything. This isn’t like you.”

“I told you I can’t!” Aya’s voice peaks in a shout, and then falls into another whisper. “It’s too much.”

“Did you see it? Like, what happened? Did you see the AI at all, or…”

“I can’t, I can’t,” Aya starts to repeat. Seija feels a surge of anger in her chest.

“You can’t just do this, you know.” Her fists clench, unclench. “There’s things we need to goddamn _know,_ Aya, it’s about the movement, we need to know what happened—”

“No—”

“Are you going to let this get in the way of your reporting? Is that something you can even _do_? You gonna prioritize yourself over us? This isn’t about just you anymore—”

“I said I _can’t,_ ” Aya screams, bolting upright. The chair sways, falls from behind her. Her eyes are burning with fear and hate. Seija gets the feeling she said something very, very wrong. “Get out, get out of my house, get the _fuck_ away from me!”

“Wh—”

Aya picks up the flower vase, smashes it on the table. 

In an instant, Seija’s stomach loses its bottom. The pieces of glass scatter around the floor, onto the wooden tabletop. Aya continues to stare, directly into the core of her, and Seija feels open, disgusting. There is so much _loathing_ in Aya’s eyes, something Seija has never seen before.

“Get _out,_ ” Aya repeats, low and shaky. Seija nods, eyes wide, pushes her chair out, turns to leave.

 

* * *

 

When she gets home, Seija decides that there is something very wrong with her. She calls Nitori, hands shaking on the receiver as the dial tone sounds, emptily in her cold room.

“Hello, Kawashiro Repairs here. This is Nitori, how can I—”

“Tori,” she says. “What the fuck happened to Aya.”

There’s a pause over the line. Then Nitori’s voice, small and fearful. “No one knows, really. All we know is that Hatate’s dead and Aya’s traumatized. What did you do?”

Seija curls her lips. “ _Why_ do you assume I always do something?”

“Face it, Seij, you’re kind of an asshole.” Nitori sounds almost affectionate, but it doesn’t stop Seija from growling into the receiver. “So tell me what happened.”

Seija sighs, and reluctantly, starts talking. She details the way Aya looked, ran up the stairs— how empty her apartment looked, the blinds shut, how she snapped, shattering the vase. As she recounts it, it starts to become more and more unreal. These are things Aya would never do, things that are so disturbingly out of character that Seija feels a chill in her extremities.  It feels like an awful dream.

“…And then I left. You should have seen the look in her eyes. It was… terrifying. Anyway,” she finishes, flopping backwards on her bed. “I did something shitty, didn’t I?”

“…Yeah.” Nitori’s voice sounds blank, emotionless. “You fucked up really bad.”

“I thought so,” Seija groans, slumping over herself. “So now what do I do?”

“There’s really nothing we can do at this point. She won’t talk, we can’t make her talk. We’re at another stalemate, really. And you,” Nitori says, and Seija can _literally_ hear the head-shaking over the phone, “ _you_ need to learn about how people actually function.”

“I’m not a fucking psychology major, Nitori,” Seija growls.

“I know you’re not. You’re a _god_ damn amanojaku. Think shit over, will you?”

The line goes dead. Seija looks, puzzled, at the phone, before it starts beeping loudly at her and she slams it down, burying her face in the pillow. There’s nothing more to say.

 

* * *

 

Nue’s room is quiet, with none of the usual awful music in her hallway, and when Seija knocks on the door she’s surprised to see that Nue is even _there._ She looks just as sullen as everyone else in the building, but it’s a different kind of sadness that she carries, and Seija notices it right away.

“God, this entire building is dead,” she says, as Nue opens the door for her. “It’s depressing.”

“What else would you expect?” Nue snaps. “One of our best reporters is dead.” 

The way she stresses the word ‘our’ is unusual, but Seija doesn’t think twice about it. She walks in, flops down on Nue’s bed— she doesn’t even bother to ask, and Nue doesn’t seem to care. 

“It feels so… wrong,” Seija finally says. She pulls out her phone, starts looking through her files to see if the footprint is still there, if it hasn’t been picked up by any antivirus scans on Yakumo in the last few days. “I think I’m about ready to drop the file, but this is just too much doom and gloom in one place, y’know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Nue mutters, stands up and bustles about the room. She pulls out a couple of papers, places them in a neat pile on her desk. Seija falls back, swinging her feet off the edge of the bed. “But if you’re gonna drop the file you should do it now, since I’m trying to figure out how we’ll get the next job and this atmosphere isn’t helping much.”

“You look pretty fucked up by this whole thing too.”

“Yeah, I am.” Nue doesn’t look at Seija, only scribbles on the papers. Her tone from across the room feels emotionless and cold as metal. “There’s some other shit going on too, so I’m not in the best place to go on any runs for the next week maybe.”

“That’s… that’s fine, really,” Seija finds herself saying, and she looks down in embarrassment as Nue’s head snaps around, startled by the sudden change in tone. “We can— we can wait if it’s best.”

Nue pauses, every process halted for a few seconds, before she turns around, looks Seija in the eye and says directly: 

“That’s not like you.”

Something warm and strange happens in Seija’s gut.

“Yeah,” she says, quietly. “Yeah, I know.”

She turns to her phone, and presses the button.


	8. orogeny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seija gets closer to understanding Nue, and gets an offer from Yakumo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is shit and almost filler and i feel awful but i have to nano so ill probably edit this all later IM SORRY
> 
> note: cw for mentions/discussion of suicide.   
> in this canon, seija has bipolar type I and often suffers psychosis (mainly delusions and paranoia) when she has manic episodes. fuck your neurotypical narratives.

When Seija wakes up, the first thing she does is pocket her keys and rig and run down the endless flight of stairs, barefoot, to Aya’s apartment. Or rather, as she checks the lock and notices that her nameplate is gone, the lights are off and cardboard scraps litter the hall, Aya’s _former_ apartment.

Annoyed, she stomps on a packing peanut, crushing it beneath her big toe, and crouches to peer under the door. Darkness. No movement— no sound. There are no traces that Aya even lived here, now. The fluorescent lights flicker above her head, barely illuminating the off-colored section of the door, where the nameplate used to be. The pipe from yesterday is still steadily leaking, rusty water pooling on the floor. Seija grits her teeth, turns on her heel.

She doesn’t want to leave this behind— oh, she wishes it could have been better. She didn’t hate Aya, ever, even though that was her job. Not to imply that she _liked_ her, but being of a neutral opinion in Seija’s mind is already enough approval. _Maybe,_ she thinks, as she walks away and up the stairs, _maybe it would have been different, if I had just left her alone._

 

* * *

 

The door falls shut with a heavy clank, as Seija returns to her room. She leaves her bed unmade, her pajamas strewn over the floor, as she shrugs on a hoodie and jeans. Throwing open the window, she presses her hand to the glass. It’s getting cold in this city; there’s rain streaking down the windows, slowly, as if it had just now stopped. She nears her nose to the glass, breathes out, and watches as it fogs over.

At this point she’s just doing things to keep calm. There’s an awful prodding sensation within her, annoying and ever-present. Droplets of water form on her forehead as she raises it from the glass, pulls up her hood. No one is around, and it used to be better like this, but now Seija just feels lonely. She picks up her phone and keys, stuffs them in her pockets, and rolls her head around to loosen her stiff shoulders before she flings her door open and locks it behind her. She’s planning to stay away from her room today.

Wherever that leads, Seija doesn’t know yet. It might be uneventful, or it might be an adventure. Either way, Seija feels nervous, strangely ambivalent. She takes two steps down at a time as she leaps down the flight, her harsh footsteps echoing in the endless shaft. It’s cold even inside, and she sees her breath, shy and white against the flickering darkness. A strange need begins to rise inside of her— the need to escape. To get far away from here. The destination doesn’t matter at all; she’s so disenchanted with this place, and her heart is in a cage, yelling and thrashing against its iron bars. 

Seija lets out a pained scream. It falls through the bleak stairway, landing on no ears at all. Only echoes, now. She continues, darting down each flight of stairs with renewed fear and adrenaline, two— three— four steps at a time, before she starts falling, too.

 

* * *

 

_Before the Fall, five exceptional beings, human and youkai, were picked by the Moriya dynasty to lead each section of a new government, built to accommodate a new and rising population. After the Fall, these five were left to fend for themselves._

_It had nothing to do with their ability— they were intelligent, natural leaders, beacons of light. Instead, these five were pulled out of their everyday lives and made to assimilate into their own form of government, without a past to build from. With nothing to connect all five of them beside their status as new leaders, they struggled for only days until they compromised. Quickly, each of them decided on the thing they valued most; what they wanted to protect, what they wanted to preserve for the city, and for its people._

_One decided her objective was to protect the health of the public. She focused her efforts on creating accessible and equal healthcare, and created a new field of research on diseases and their cures. Her desire was to make sure that no one was left untreated, that there was no illness without a cure. And with her unmatched intellect and pointed ambition, she started to build such a world, and made leaps and bounds of progress the likes of which had never seen before._

_Another set her sights on a balanced and thriving economy. She had tremendous influence and a sharp wit, and never quite bothered with straightforwardness. Her ways were cunning and intimidating, but her intentions were pure— she no longer wanted to see such a large divide in wealth as there had been before the Fall. Her wish was this and this alone: that everyone, no matter how low, would be able to make a suitable and comfortable living. With her tricks and string-pulling, she drew the divide closer and closer together as the years went on._

_The third was cursed with the ability to read minds, and what she had observed in the world around her led her to believe firmly in the value of education. She knew the effects of a lack of education on a young mind, and understood the importance it had in every person’s future. Her goal was to make sure that early education and higher academia was accessible, pertinent and meaningful. She generally stayed away from group discussions, and did her own work independently of the other candidates, but her efforts were valued and held in high regard among her peers, and the broken system of education began to piece itself together once more._

_The fourth had always possessed a sensitive heart. Some would say she was unsuited for politics; others would call her naive. But the Moriyas must have had some use for someone so idealistic and determined, everyone said, and so she dedicated her efforts to justice and peace in the city. She would let no one go homeless, protect every marginalized adult and every abused child, and make the world a softer place to live. Her resolve was so strong, and her desire for equality so deep-rooted, that everyone who would otherwise ignore her suddenly began to take her seriously. She became a powerful force for good in the city, for as long as they all lasted._

_The fifth, an unquestionable paragon of leadership and power, required absolute justice under law. Her mission was to engineer a rightful world through strict enforcement of laws; to let no criminal go unpunished, and no innocent go imprisoned. She valued truth above all else, and was a powerful symbol of light for her peers. As such, she was held in highest regard, and was often the last word in group discussions. She associated regularly with the fourth, and bickered and cooperated almost simultaneously. And although she had good intentions, her desire for structure and control planted a seed within her that would eventually overrun her._

_These five beings were known as the Monarchs. They would begin to rebuild the city, shattered from the dictatorship of the Moriya dynasty, and create a new and pure Gensokyo from the ashes of its old, burnt-out shell. They were real, they were righteous, and most of all:_

_They were all alive, once._

 

* * *

 

Anger, anger like hot lava wells up in Seija’s spine as she digs her hand into her jeans pocket and discovers that her keys are missing.

At first it’s bewilderment, then doubt. She’s too fast to be pickpocketed— she must have just left them somewhere, or they’re in a different pocket— but when Seija rummages through each and every pocket on her body, she starts to fume. Her rig is still there, and so is her phone, and her wallet. But her keys. Her keys are gone. She _must_ have heard them jingle, somehow. She used to do this for a _living._ It’s not just as simple as walking up to someone and—

“Aaaaaarrrrghhhhh!”

In sheer frustration she turns around on herself a couple of times, and then sits down on a banister facing the road. She kicks her feet angrily, pulls out her phone (after doing another cursory check on that pocket, because why not) and hesitates before dialing Nue’s number. Just as expected, it gives a few dial tones and then cuts straight to voicemail; exasperated, Seija gives up for five seconds and then takes it out again, pulling up the chat client.

She scrolls down the list of her contacts— **HeianAlien** is idle, somewhere halfway between **analyticAirstrike** and **Qcumberkappa** and directly above **xXhighheelhackerXx**. Immediately, Seija feels like she’s gotten slugged in the chest, and pulls up the window to distract herself.

> **inverse-monarchy:** houjuu are you there fuck

She can’t stop thinking about Hatate. The last time Seija saw her, she was smiling, taking selfies with Aya, radiant and wild and free. To see that gone, in an instant, extinguished like a candle— it makes her sick. Bile rises up in Seija’s stomach, and she lurches over the railing to vomit.

It takes her a while to recover; she’s parched and hungry, and out of breath. Her stomach continues to churn even when she’s upright again. She feels the buzzing against her hip, just then, and anxiously pulls it out.

> **HeianAlien:** hey i just got this! are you okay?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** someone fuckin stole my god dam n keys  
>  **HeianAlien:** oh shit.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** i dont need yr pity or laughs rn listen i just need a place to sleep  
>  **HeianAlien:  
> ** **HeianAlien:** i can arrange that if it’s okay with you.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** thanks, ig  
>  **HeianAlien:** you’ve done some good shit for me. sometimes i gotta repay you.

Seija shuts the phone off with a trembling finger. Hoisting herself off the railing, she plants her two feet on the ground. Stable, and connected. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that she’s her own living being and not a manic, ego-dead extension of the world around her.

For now, she walks home.

 

* * *

 

It starts to rain, hard, as Seija trudges through puddles of mud and gasoline rainbows back to her building. Her gut still aches with the remainders of anxiety, and her pockets feel strangely empty without the promise of her keys, to let her into the only place she can call home. Amanojaku don’t get attached to places, not like humans or some other youkai, but Seija’s life has been such an unstable thrill ride that sometimes, somehow, she needs a place to cling to when everything else gets too much for her to handle. It’s stupid of her, she recognizes, but right now is so transient, a constant fade effect into the next phase of her life. 

She turns her phone on and off, looking repeatedly at the line of instant messages. Droplets of rain fall on the screen, magnifying the pixels, wobbling gently on the illuminated glass. At this point Seija is tempted to call a cab and make it back before her feet start hurting, but there’s something about the scenery now that keeps her on the street— trails of rain down the glass in front of neon signs, a mist across the entire road hovering in layers just above the asphalt, gnarled misshapen trees in the middle of the boulevard, dripping water from their half-dead leaves. It’s still Gensokyo, it’s still the city Seija knows so well. The one she grew up in, the one that pressed her into the pavement and caused her to push back as hard as she could. The one that made her who she is, right now, the burnt-out anarchist hacker walking down a halflit street on the way back to an uncertain future.

She passes the alleyway outside the Oni’s Hideaway, and pauses. There’s a silhouette waiting under the lamp, still as a cardboard cutout. But it’s unmistakable, what with those wings— it’s Nue’s shadow. Puzzled, Seija stops in her tracks, and Nue calls out.

“Hey, asshole,” she grins, as Seija approaches. 

“Are you serious? It’s cold and wet as fuck out here.” In disbelief, she waves her phone light around in Nue’s face. “Dumbass. You didn’t have to wait. That makes me feel bad.”

“That was my goal,” Nue smirks. Seija suppresses the intense urge to kick her between the legs. “Actually, no it wasn’t, but I figured you might have a hard time getting all the way up here, from where you were.”

“I don’t even know where I was,” Seija admits, swaying on the balls of her feet. “Fuck you, get me inside right now, I’m going to sneeze my guts up or some shit.”

Nue laughs, high and gleeful, and unfolds an umbrella. “Be patient, shitbaby. Still got a couple blocks to walk.”

“I’ll have you know that I’m older than you so you can’t call me a shitbaby.”

“Oh yeah? How old are you?”

“I’m 19.”

“Joke’s on you, shitbaby, I’m over 800 years old.”

“…You look like a 13-year-old girl.”

“You know what? Fuck you.”

 

* * *

 

Nue’s room is darkly lit, and soothingly quiet. Immediately, Seija flings her jacket onto the floor, not even bothering to take out the electronics in her pockets before everything falls to the rug with a soft thump. She bends down and begins to unlace her boots, while Nue fusses about and hangs up Seija’s drenched hoodie.

“Here. If you sleep in those clothes you’ll catch cold or something.”

Seija grunts in disinterest before a wad of clothes hits her in the back of the head.

“Ugh,” she groans. “What was that for.”

“If you die of pneumonia you won’t get to overthrow the government.”

Reluctantly, Seija straightens out the ball of fabric into two separate pieces, and turns to the wall to shrug off her wet shirt and pull the dry one over her head. After doing the same with the pair of basketball shorts, she lets herself fall backward onto Nue’s bed.

“Damn,” she says. “I don’t have my meds.”

“You don’t take them with you?” Nue asks, in the middle of brushing her teeth.

Seija nods, hesitantly. She wants to say, _I don’t trust myself with having all of them at all times. I’m afraid of having an episode and then wanting to take all of them at once. I’m afraid of that moment I lose all control over what I say or do. I’m afraid of making bad decisions that I can’t take back. I’m afraid of myself, and I’m afraid of dying._

But she doesn’t say any of it; it’s not her place to worry Nue even more, at this point. Instead, she pushes herself under the covers, and gives a weak and exhausted sigh. The pain in her is abruptly present— it’s been trying to come back, every so often, cracking away at the ice from below. No matter how she tries to distract herself, even if she’s working towards something so earthshaking and important as this, it resurfaces every so often. Just like this. Seija feels shaky, vulnerable, without her shell of anger and rebellion. More than anything, she feels broken apart, for no reason at all.

She curls up into herself just as Nue finishes brushing her teeth and tentatively pulls back the duvet. She’s facing the wall, trying to take up less space, when Nue turns over, presses her back into Seija’s almost purposefully. Her wings are soft, barely intrusive at all— one side rests over Seija’s back, curling around her almost calmingly. Suddenly, Seija realizes it: Nue is the first person she has ever wanted not to hate her. It’s so wrong, it feels so wrong, but she can’t help it, she can’t—

“Seija?”

She blinks, confused, before she realizes Nue is talking to _her._

“That’s the first time you’ve actually called me that.”

Nue offers nothing to that, just a quiet chuckle.

“It’s hard to be so formal with you, sometimes.”

“Nue,” Seija says, so quietly she can barely hear herself.

“That’s… the first time you’ve called _me_ that. Seija.”

“Nue,” she repeats, in a breath.

“Seija.”

Like this, their backs pressed together, curled up under an unfamiliar ceiling, Seija and Nue practice each other’s names. They’re facing away from each other, but every time Seija says her name, it’s like coming face to face with Nue, again and again. With every repetition, the usually inscrutable youkai becomes more familiar to Seija, like a dream that’s been recurring for years, like a childhood friend she was too young to remember. 

 

* * *

 

When Seija wakes up, Nue is gone.

No note, just a text, two hours old on her dying phone: _gone to visit nitori, will be back later. maybe get a new key made?_ The fake-questioning tone in her message is almost entertaining, but Seija knows it’s more of a command than a suggestion. She stares at the wall for a moment, before her phone goes off again; this time, it’s from her email client, with a message from—

_fuck._

Yakumo. Yakumo, the message is from Yakumo. Scrambling up to her feet, she opens it, pacing back and forth in excitement and fear. Breathlessly, she reads it, hands shaking on her phone, out of focus and blurry with movement. _To whom it may concern._ That’s opening enough, Seija thinks, dimly scrolling. _We at Yakumo Enterprises would like to extend an offer of a one-time job._ Okay. Okay, it’s not about what happened with Eientei. No one found them out. It’s more anticipation than dread now. _In the intelligence department— you were chosen from a pool of 1,000 possible candidates due to your talent and credentials._ A faint thrill of pride in Seija’s stomach. _We expect you at 15:00 next Wednesday outside Hakurei and 71st. You will know when you see our representative._ This could be trouble. _Sincerely._

Yes.

_Yes!_ Seija nearly whoops out loud, flags the email in her inbox. Important. This is something terrifyingly big, looming over them, the horizon darkened with its shadow, and Seija is ready. She’s so ready. Next Wednesday? Her mind leaps forward; she pictures them standing outside Yakumo, looking at Nue every so often discreetly, excitement clouding both of their features. She wonders what Eientei is like, on the inside. What the guts of that place look like— didn’t Nue say they were really big on chemical warfare? Adrenaline rushes through Seija’s body, rattling between her bones. It’s too much too soon, all at once.

She collapses, backwards, onto the bed. It’s still warm. Seija resists the urge to text Nue right away, and pushes her head further into the duvet, stifling a prideful grin. She’s _got_ to tell Nitori about this, once she’s free. In a burst of mania Seija reverse-engineers her schedule: wait till Nue gets back, probably about an hour from now, get drinks with Nitori, break the news. Get to the building administrator about the key. She’s almost ready to track down the person who stole it in the first place, itching with energy and paranoia and euphoria. Meds— she’s got to take her meds. It’ll get bad if she doesn’t by the end of the day, she’s already missed enough. _Seija._ She can’t stop thinking about the fragile tone with which Nue repeated her name. _Seija, Seija, Seija._ Muscles tense up. Brain feels electric-wired, she shoots up to a rigid sitting position, plants the heels of her hands into her thighs, stares at the wall. It’s like an earthquake, when this happens, only quick shocks of tremors at a time, that seem to go on forever. What if Nue isn’t coming back? What if she’s not with Nitori after all? Her spine is ramrod-straight, lightning in each of her joints. _Seija._ Blinking rapidly, breathing harshly. 

_Seija—_

Her knees give out. She falls face-first into the pillows. Her heart is still going, at a speed she can’t quite keep up with. 

Seija waits, for the storm to pass, and then calls Nitori.


	9. unearth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AI monitors unusual activity in the Netherworld, and Seija has a nightmare.
> 
> The operation on Eientei is around the corner.

Nitori is sitting at a table by the wall-length window, head resting in her hand. When Seija walks into the coffee shop, it takes her a while to locate her, but the bright green hat in the corner ends up giving her away. She turns to Seija, waving with her bionic arm; the joints make mechanical, almost soothing, whirring noises as her fingers move back and forth.

“Seij!” she exclaims, tapping the other side of the table. “I have this offer I got from Momiji the other day, it says it’s 20% off the next coffee if you buy one. Cool, huh?”

“Uh… I guess,” Seija sighs. “Is this just an excuse to use it? I mean, it’s not like I care, but…”

“Aw, why would you say that? If I have it, why not use it, right?” She grins, ear-to-ear, and pulls out the coupon. It’s wrinkled, probably from being in Nitori’s (or maybe Momiji’s) pocket, and barely legible. The bar code is still intact, though— Seija wonders how she can even _do_ that.

“I guess so.”

Nitori shrugs. “You don’t seem too enthusiastic. But hey, it’s not my problem you have no taste for great bargains.”

“You’re like one of those coupon-obsessed moms or some shit,” Seija says blankly, and Nitori bursts into laughter, slamming her hands on the tabletop.

“Oh man,” she says, out of breath. “I should have expected something like that would come outta your mouth.” She pauses, slides her hand across the table. Hidden between her webbed fingers is a thin USB drive, with no label except a small black X drawn in magic marker on the back. Seija’s eyes widen, questioningly.

“Listen, I got this off of Aya before she left. It doesn’t have anything about the thing that just happened, but it has information on the third company, Chireiden. Apparently she went down there for warmup before they left for the Netherworld. On there is a couple of files with IP addresses, passwords, etc. Keep it safe.”

Seija nods, grips the USB drive and pockets it. Nitori winks, and half-raises her hand to call a waiter for her order— when she notices the TV screen. It only takes Seija a couple seconds to focus in on it, what with Nitori’s startled reaction. The headline, all caps, reads so satisfyingly in Seija’s head. 

 

YAKUMO ENTERPRISES SUFFERS SEVERE STOCK DROP

DAMAGE TO DATABASE BLAMED FOR SUDDEN DEFICIT

 

Nitori gapes, then turns around to face Seija. Her face says it all, but she whispers it anyway.

“It worked?”

Seija winks back.

“Like a charm.”

 

* * *

 

It’s no exaggeration how hot Hell really is, in the medium or otherwise. Even before you go too far down, there’s still scalding air blasting up from random vents in the ground, and in the medium the pressure is just as high. The data you have to swim through can make it hard to move down there, and going any lower than just above Blazing Hell is unheard of. Only a few youkai sorts can handle it there, and that’s because they were _built_ for that kind of heat. Even just walking in the medium can get your immaterial feet prickling.

But, if you’re used to it, if you _live_ down there, that’s a different story.

Softly, Chireiden rattles in its foundations. The sound of footsteps— tiptoes, down the glowing-red hallway. As if not to wake the cats.

The Telepath, pacing gently through the carpeted hall, picks up a kitten, runs her hand down its soft back. The stained-glass windows let in a subtle glow, leaking from the magma below outside, surrounding everything in an eerie red cast of light. Through the hallways, she strolls, a purring cat in her arms. There’s no one here but her and the many pets, sleeping on windowsills and hiding in rafters. She feels a twinge, in her third eye— it swivels, strains on the veins linking it to the Telepath’s body. It seems to be staring upward, not even just north, but straight up, through the ground and into the sky.

“She’s not coming back,” the Telepath says, sighing, as if reprimanding her third eye for even thinking about it. “Now, where did I put the books? Ah, yes…”

Mumbling to herself, she walks into the library in Chireiden, sits on the stained-glass windowsill, and closes two of her eyes.

It’s almost too far to see, where she’s looking, so much that all she really can make out is shadows moving. But the shadows are all she needs right now. Usually there’s only one, up there— with large wings that stretch out behind it, a huge cylinder for an arm. Lately, though, on her daily checks, the Telepath has witnessed something terrifying in her blurry picture of the Netherworld. Three shadows, two with smaller wings (that look nothing like Okuu’s, she thinks, and is relieved) and one she can barely recognize. Something awful happened up there— she wasn’t around to watch it, but she _knew._

The scope of what the Telepath can know is, in fact, limited; it’s nowhere near as omniscient as the rumors say. But even when she isn’t looking, her intuition is almost always right on the mark, and all she can understand of the situation is that there’s something dangerous in the Netherworld. Something not human— not youkai, either. Something that could potentially destroy everything it comes in contact.

She’s been trying to identify the shadow, for days, but the thing about reading minds is that it often detracts from other processes, like memory. She often has to clear out old files to make room for the constant flow of information, which is why her memory isn’t as strong as the other AIs. But the Telepath remembers this, this silhouette, how it moves. She just can’t place her finger on who it is.

_Maybe it’s better_ , she thinks, _if I never do._

 

* * *

 

After the coffee, and a long bureaucracy-ridden process to get her key replaced, Seija finally makes it back to the apartment. Nue is taking the day off, as she said over text, so Seija has the time now to relax and do whatever she wants. She falls back onto the bed— the springs within the mattress make an awful metallic squeak as she collapses. _Wednesday,_ she thinks. _That’s three days out. Nue said it’d be enough._

She closes the curtains— the sun behind the clouds is still bright enough to get in, and Seija wants nothing more but complete darkness and a long nap. She throws her shirt off, wriggles under the duvet, and dreams of a long winter.

 

* * *

 

In the dream, she is standing in a clearing of the ruins she saw before in the Netherworld. It is snowing, and the cold is sharp and cuts through Seija like a knife, to the bone. She is acutely aware of every snowflake that falls, all at the same time; they dust the broken stone pillars with a coat of white, leave a lingering chill on everything. The ruin is being eaten up, worn away by the snow.

In the middle of the clearing, facing across from Seija, is Hatate. She looks different than usual— her heavy coat of eyeliner is missing, her pigtails gone as well, leaving her hair full and unruly over her shoulders. One of her wings is torn off, but the base of it remains, beating futilely against her back every so often. The other one is intact, but it looks grey; Seija can’t tell if the color itself has changed, or if it’s just the way the snow looks on it. But she’s still Hatate, and it’s almost a relief to see her here, relatively in one piece. Seija takes a step forward, reaches out her hand, and Hatate gives a small, fleeting smile— but she doesn’t move. And, Seija realizes in sheer terror, neither can she. It’s like she’s rooted, chained down to the stone beneath the snow, is what it feels like. 

Hatate keeps her eyes focused on Seija, who is now summoning every ounce of strength she has to take another step forward. But she’s paralyzed, she can’t move no matter how sharp her will becomes, like her brain is disconnected from her body. She examines her feet, again, and then she sees it— shackles, iridescent, over her ankles— and screams. 

The snow absorbs all the sound.

Like it’s swallowed in a vortex, her shout disappears. Fear, cold and sharp, overcomes her entire body. Seija shuts her eyes, hard, willing herself to escape. The darkness behind her eyelids is almost relieving compared to the sheer white over everything, but she knows she can’t keep them closed forever, she _knows—_

_—opens,_ in front of her is a curtain of purple and then, inexplicably, a flash of topaz-yellow eyes, she lurches over, falls to her feet with the shackles digging their sharp edges into her ankles, she closes her eyes again and bows her head, as if praying—

—a voice she’s never heard before, a wail of despair.

“Look,” it screams, high and tearful, “look what you’ve _done—_ I’m not _human—_ ”

 

Seija wakes, with a start, sitting straight up in bed, and lets out a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding.

 

* * *

 

Nue’s there in two minutes flat, after Seija finally gets focused enough to call her. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, a worried look in her eyes, as Seija tells her everything. The cold is still in her bones, somehow, the memory fresh and searing in her mind. The flash of those eyes, the _desperation_ in that voice— she isn’t crying, but she’s shaking, fists balling up in the comforter for stability. 

Then Nue’s hands are on hers, quietly lifting her fingers from their grip, one by one. Seija freezes.

She never knew Nue could be so gentle. With all her sharp edges, she had always seemed like the _get over it_ type. Her mannerisms, the way she moves— none of this matches up. Seija lets Nue’s fingers untangle hers from the duvet, biting her lip to keep from crying. She doesn’t want to appear weak, she’s tired of being so _scared,_ but Nue doesn’t even seem to mind; this isn’t the playfully malevolent Nue she knows, it’s something completely different, something she only got a glimpse of when they slept back-to-back that night. 

Once her fingers are all free, Nue presses her hands into Seija’s. She’s warm, and Seija stares down at her hands, at the scars in the webbing of her fingers, white and thin and deep. Those aren’t ice scars. She’s been through something that Seija hasn’t yet found out about. She always knew Nue was hiding something, but she never assumed it’d be for _her_ sake. Like Nue wanted to make sure Seija didn’t worry about her, and it worked, for a while. Now, though, she just wants to know. To _understand_.

“Seij,” Nue says, softly, “I’m really sorry.”

“Sorry for what? You had nothing to do with it— you weren’t even _in_ the dream—”

“I’m just sorry, okay,” Nue says, and Seija wishes she hadn’t noticed the tremble in her voice. “I’m so sorry.”

 

Then, unexpectedly, Seija is in her arms. 

 

Her throat dries up, her mind completely blank. It’s so unfamiliar, so surreal, that she’s breathless. Nue pulls her in, lets Seija nestle her chin in the crook of her shoulder. The chill melts away from her bones.

Nue doesn’t elaborate, and Seija doesn’t ask.

 

* * *

 

Wednesday comes quicker than Seija intended, but after the initial shock abates, the dream has inspired a new curiosity within her, and she’s more than ready for the Eientei run. Nue is grinning as she straps her rig to the inside of her jacket, her pistol to the holster on her hip. The fang at the corner of her lip is bared, the softness in her eyes gone— adrenaline has kicked in at this point, even just getting ready, as Seija pulls her vest over her head.

“Same deal, right,” she asks, and Nue spins around, energetic as ever.

“Yup. Me on the ground for damage control, you in the medium. Oh man, I wonder what Eientei looks like on the inside…”

“Do you have the right rounds?” Seija checks, and then examines her own pistol.

“Red and blue?”

“Yup.”

Nue cracks her knuckles, rolls back her shoulders. Seija grabs the keys from the hook in front of her door.

“Let’s fuck shit up,” she says, and Nue just nods.

“Let’s.”


	10. exhale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A jarring twist nearly ruins the operation on Eientei, and a hell raven goes to apologize.

 

She awakens in darkness.

Something within her is changing, _being_ changed, being _ripped_ from inside her. She can’t scream, can’t even move. Dimly, she thinks back to what that person said.

 _You need this_ , _Hijiri. Please. Do it for us._

 _No,_ she cries. _No. I want to stay human._

A tremor through her body— she keens, as if in mourning, and then her consciousness folds into itself, broken, gone.

 

* * *

 

Seija and Nue arrive after cutting through back alleys, at the corner where Yakumo expected them. A single glance between them confirms it— they need to buzz in first, to access the main building.

“Do you think Eientei’s gonna be as bad as they make it out to be?” Nue questions, hooking the jack behind her ear.

“Nah, it’s nothing we can’t handle. As long as everything’s according to plan and there aren’t any anomalies we should be good,” Seija shrugs. She doesn’t show the insecurity inside her, repeats it in her head so she can believe it herself.

“Okay. On your mark.”

In near-unison, Seija and Nue buzz in together.

 

* * *

 

The first thing she sees when she buzzes back out and into the boardroom is a tall, half-shadowed figure. Something drops within Seija, something heavy, weighing her down. Her stomach lurches, and again she feels that _presence,_ a sheer intimidation, before the silhouette comes into full light. 

Before her is what Seija can only assume is the head AI of Yakumo— the Ancient. Instantly, she understands what they were all talking about when they spoke reverently about her, in hushed tones. Someone that could make the most hardened anarchists bow their heads. The air pressure only gets heavier when she hears her voice.

“Hello, there. My new friends.”

Seija _shivers._

“I am the Ancient, the AI of Yakumo. And quite honestly, I am pleasantly surprised that you’ve come. Most of our… ah… _mercenaries_ never turn up. Whether it is fear or a sudden danger. But I cannot tell you how glad I am that you’ve made it here.”

Nue flashes a glance at Seija. From the corner of her eye, but she catches it— half-afraid, and half-determined.

“Lovely. Now, please allow me to go over the agenda: you will be escorted quickly to Eientei grounds. You must finish the job by 05:00. If there are any anomalies, I trust you to take care of them. Eientei has a habit of leaving loose ends untied, and I am not responsible for any harm these loose ends may cause you. I have sent you information as to the location of the files we require. If these files are damaged in any way, know that I will eliminate you immediately. Others have tried before, darlings. Please do not disappoint me.”

Every _word_ of hers is like poison, or the taste of blood in Seija’s mouth— warm-seeming, but hard and sharp as metal. She glances at Nue, as discreetly as she can; Nue shows absolutely no signs of fear, her resolve iron-clad, eyes glinting. It almost makes her jealous, | how _brave_ she always seems, even if it’s a facade. She hasn’t yet seen Nue scared, or crying— she’s been strong where Seija wasn’t, and part of her appreciates that. 

“I know that Eientei sabotaged us. So does the whole city, now. So, if you will,” the Ancient says, and her eyes grow sharp and terrifying, “let them have it, personally, from _me_.”

With that, they are escorted from the room. Seija slides into the backseat of the taxi, bringing Nue behind her. As she sinks down into the leather seats, all she can think of is the primal fear, and of the dream. It didn’t even seem like her own dream, she realizes— like being trapped in someone else’s nightmare. 

Nue slides her hand into the middle, layers it over Seija’s. That’s all the resolve she needs, right now.

 

* * *

 

The taxi drops them off at a very familiar corner— Seija recognizes it without even looking at the streetsigns. The flickering neon lights, the rusted doors to nowhere, how thin and pressurized the streets are here; they’re all very distinctly Eientei, the end of the maze that is the Bamboo District. She walks over to a doorstep, slips into the alley next to it, and waits for Nue to follow before she crouches down behind a dumpster. 

“Eugh,” she coughs quietly, careful to keep her voice down. “I hope I don’t smell this shit through the whole mission.”

Nue gives a muffled laugh, and Seija can barely see her silhouette nodding in the dark. “I gotta dive in too, right? And then I can buzz out and do whatever.”

“Yeah, that was the plan.” Seija shrugs, starts to fumble with the connector. “Just for getting in, really. I got the info on my phone that Yakumo gave me, but I also got some of my own shit.” After entering a password, she brings up a screen on her internet browser. “I have some of the security clearances, so you can just go right through and I don’t have to disassemble anything. And I guess things will probably be faster at this rate.”

“Oh, sick,” Nue grins. “Do you know what she meant when she said loose ends?”

“I hope it’s not what I think,” Seija says, and feels a chill in her spine. “Alright, we gotta go.”

Nue nods again, while Seija pulls the cable behind her ear and makes contact.

 

* * *

 

The first thing she notices about Eientei is that everything is built straight upward; unlike Yakumo where everything was flat on the floor until the data archives, Eientei hurtles upwards with no end in sight. Most of the lights are out, and there’s stairs for those unable to fly, that curve around every corner— but there’s no sound save for the echoing of a steadily-beeping monitor somewhere. Nue buzzes out, and Seija watches her colors fade into a dark shadow from the medium. 

She raises a hand, to signal, and Seija pulls up her chat client as she searches for the entrance to the data room. 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** i think im gna go and take down security monitors first just in case  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** stay there till i get it done ok  
>  **HeianAlien:** hehe, whatever you say, chief.

 

Sighing and shrugging, Seija locates the entrance, and speeds around that corner. She keeps the clearance code tight at her hip, and passes through with flying colors, before the room opens up before her. At first she makes sure to scan each monitor for abnormalities, but halfway down the line there’s absolutely no sign of any movement at all, so Seija just goes in for it, starts disassembling the delicate connections. Her hands get caught within a toothlike trap in the first five seconds— despite the pain, Seija just barks with laughter, and the medium swallows the sound whole. She loosens it with the other hand, works out the trap quickly and efficiently, and finally hits on the kill-all process. Instantly, the monitors shut down. 

She’ll have to delete the five minutes of evidence that she was even here, but that doesn’t pose too much of a problem. Giddy, Seija rushes out of the monitor room and floats next to Nue’s shadow in meatspace.

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** ready to go  
>  **HeianAlien:** nice. okay i guess i gotta fly for this shit, huh.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** you have wigns fuck you  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** *wings  
>  **HeianAlien:** wigns?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** just stfu i dont got time for this

 

Nue winks, rushes forward. Seija overtakes her in seconds, stopping her with another message.

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** slow tf down nue listen  
>  **HeianAlien:** booooooooooring.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** thers some lil red lights on the far sides of the main shaft can you see them  
>  **HeianAlien:** yeah, they look like they’re lined up too. like lasers but not.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** newsflash theyre not lasers but they are barriers n if you go through wo yr clearance  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** you might just get hit w neurotoxings, js  
>  **HeianAlien:** roger. and look, i’m not even going to comment on that typo.  
>  **HeianAlien:** i am being so generous here. look how nice i am.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** i s2g nue do you want me to fuckin kill you

 

Nue gives Seija that wide, shit-eating grin, but it’s not like she can see it in her shadow. This time, though, she waits until Seija gets up to the checkpoint. The medium is silent— nothing but the buzzing of lines becoming walls. Nue hovers just below, impatient, until Seija finally drops the code.

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** look just take it itll get you through the next three probs  
>  **HeianAlien:** you sure about that?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** can never be 100 but like yeah as close as it gets

 

Nue catches it, one handed, presses it to her chest as she floats directly through. The red laser-light turns green as she passes, and Seija fistpumps, before noticing that a light is on up on the second checkpoint, where the huge shaft turns into hallways. Cautiously, she drifts upward, her mouth pulled into a dubious expression.

She pulls up the text box to tell Nue to stop, but it seems like she’s gotten the message already.

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** hey did you see that  
>  **HeianAlien:** yeah i’m seeing it right now. do you think someone’s up there?  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** jfc i hope not  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** is this what she meant by the loose ends  
>  **HeianAlien:** if someone’s still here then i guess that’s what she means.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** oh shit  
>  **HeianAlien:** i guess i gotta go up there huh?

 

Seija freezes. She hadn’t considered, in all her manic planning for this project, what would happen if there was another living _being_ in the way. And she’s not really in the mood to fight, or to kill. All she wants to do is tear through ice and get this job done.

But she has to make sure, first.

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** yea ig so  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** ill follow you up there but yr doing damage control  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** tell me to buzz out if you need backup  
>  **HeianAlien:** i don’t want you to do that though.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** it could be bad true  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** youll be good though right  
>  **HeianAlien:** don’t worry about me.

 

Sejia’s eyelid twitches in unease, and she trails behind Nue’s shadow up towards the entrance to the hallway, where the light is still on. Slowly, Nue ascends, drifting uncertainly towards the corridor, and then grabs hold of the edge, pulls herself up and over. Immediately Seija backs off, and a message pops up onto the screen.

 

 

> **HeianAlien:** don’t move.

 

She hovers in place, her body frozen. 

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** shit  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** who is that  
>  **HeianAlien:** i don’t know i’m facing them now  
>  **HeianAlien:** turn your sound on seija. right now.

 

Seija hates turning the sound on in the medium— everything is amplified, echoed off the walls of data to sound even bigger and even _more_ distracting than usual. But Nue— she’s up there, facing someone, needing backup— so she reluctantly flips the switch on her gauntlet.

Immediately, she hears the yelling.

“I know who you work for,” says the voice. Seija quickly rockets above the hallway, peeks down into it, and sees another figure further down. The shadow wears a skirt, and has long hair, from what Seija can see, but its most defining quality is the ears on its head. Some sort of rabbit youkai? 

Nue doesn’t speak. She has her gun pointed, at the rabbit’s head. Seija can’t see her eyes, but she can feel the intensity radiating off her; Nue is angry. Angry that someone got in the way, that something messed up her perfect plans. Again, Seija remembers her need for control.

“I have the self-destruct activation for this entire building in my pocket,” the rabbit shouts. Its voice is distinctly feminine, but it’s not like Seija’s one to assume. “If you shoot, I’ll press it.”

A perfect silence envelops the entire hall. Seija watches, horrified, as Nue’s finger moves back, on the trigger.

 

The gunshot is so loud it hurts. 

Nue keeps the pistol leveled at the body, in case they move again, but after waiting thirty seconds she lets it down to her side. Rushing over, Seija hovers by Nue’s silhouette as they check the body— no heartbeat, chest bleeding mainly. But in the medium Seija can see things that Nue cannot, and what she sees, then and there, is that the rabbit youkai wasn’t lying— they really did have the mechanism, right there, in their pocket. And it’s counting down.

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** oh fuck nue we gotta go  
>  **HeianAlien:** don’t tell me she really  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** yes she had it the whole time it goes off in 15 minutes we need to MOVE  
>  **HeianAlien:** dear god no. ok i have these room clearers. i’ll tell you when i drop the grenade and then we’re out  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** jfc i didnt know you had them  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** but ok tell me when

 

Nue extracts a lump from her inside pocket, and pulls the pin. Carefully, she places it directly on the rabbit youkai’s chest. Seija can see her nametag from here: Reisen U. Inaba.

 

 

> **HeianAlien:** ok go go GO GO GO GO GO

 

Seija hurtles out of the hallway, Nue directly on her tail, before she hears the explosion. It’s the last one she’ll hear in the medium— she reaches onto her gauntlet and switches the sound off.

She doesn’t even notice she’s shaking until she gets into the file room and starts to cut away at the ice. It’s only then that she notices her fingers are trembling. The first file cabinet cracks open, though, and then the second— Seija loses her own identity, shifting into dissociation, with absolutely no feeling of the ice scraping at her hands. She’s working completely from her unconscious, in a flow state. No pain, no noise. Just the quiet echoes of her own heartbeat against the sounding board of the medium.

The third vault falls open. Seija grabs the files, moves them to her remote storage for now. Mindlessly, she reassembles the protection on the vaults, sets the mechanisms into place with an audible click. The environment around her has started to change color, into an awful, bleeding red.

When she’s done Seija springs off the hall into the main shaft, plummeting, not even bothering to catch herself. Nue follows, but she can barely keep up with Seija’s memorized speed, and soon she’s on ground level and in security, reconnecting it to the cameras, deleting the records one by one by one. Nue is on the ground, now, too, crouching to buzz out, before Seija flies back into the main hallway and signals for the blast.

And then, they buzz out.

 

* * *

 

Something familiar moves in the still of the Netherworld ruins. She wakes, beats her wings as she props herself up with her broken arm cannon, and looks straight up into the endless sky. 

It’s always cold up here, but Utsuho’s gotten used to it. Even though, before, she lived in and around the heat of Blazing Hell, she wasn’t really surprised at how easily she had adjusted. It took her a year to wake up, truly, because the chill had set into her bones and kept her from moving. But up here years go by like days, and there’s no difference between the setting sun and the rising one. The cold is simple, predictable. In a place with so many ghosts and so little movement, it’s always going to be cold.

Movement, lately, has been picking up within the ruins. Utsuho has noticed the dust moving, seen leaves fall inexplicably from the tree at the center of the labyrinth. Between long sleeps and nights awake, she has watched a lone figure move through the ethereal stillness of this place, tattered and torn. She hasn’t confronted her yet, but Utsuho knows she’s still alive. If she can even use that word, for someone like her.

When she finally stretches out her legs and starts to search, a quiet rustling from behind the tree clues her in. She peers around the corner, careful to avoid the node just next to it, but her arm cannon’s in the way, again. The presence disappears. Ruffling her feathers, Utsuho walks back towards her favorite spot under the broken pillars, and flies up to the top of the white stone to look over as much of the labyrinth as she can.

She sees her then, darting almost unnoticeably across the entrance to another path. She doesn’t even waste a moment— she leaps off the pillar and rockets directly to where the movement came from originally. Setting her feet down and kicking up dust, she coughs, and then sighs when she notices there’s no one there.

Until she turns back to where she came from, and looks straight into those amber-yellow eyes.

“Wait,” Utsuho says, outstretching a hand. The AI flinches, as if avoiding a slap.

“How did you know? That I was here,” she whispers.

“You’ve been here for decades! I never wanted to scare you.”

The AI opens her mouth, then looks to the side and closes her lips, in futility. Utsuho looks at her, how she can barely fill out the old ragged dress she still wears, her human body tired and thin and weary. Her hair falls almost over her eyes.

“You knew I was here, the whole time?”

“Yeah! I mean, I wasn’t looking for you, after…” Utsuho doesn’t go on. The AI’s face finishes her sentence for her. “I didn’t want to bring things back. So I just let you stay.”

“You could have killed me,” she says. “I’m sure it would have been better, really.”

Utsuho is silent, at that. There’s no response she can really give.

“Well, I didn’t. I knew better, after it was over. And, I wanted to tell you. Since the day I figured out you were still alive.” Utsuho squeezes her eyes shut, to keep back the threat of tears. “I wanted to apologize.”

 

At the center of their deserted labyrinth, the AI of Myouren extends her hand.

 


	11. cyclical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nue talks about her aversion to murder, the Lunarian loses her most treasured student, and the Telepath makes the first move.

The stairs seem much longer than before as Seija climbs them; it’s only up to the third floor, where Nue’s room is, but for some reason time feels distorted and each step feels like hours. Nue follows behind her, slower and less energetic than usual, her footsteps quiet, less assuming. There’s something eerie in the atmosphere here, but instead of lingering it seems to follow Nue where she walks, like a storm cloud that just won’t break. 

When she gets to the iron door, Seija waits for Nue to catch up. She takes much longer than Seija has ever seen before; she almost wants to shout, to be just as irritating as Nue can be sometimes, prod her around a little bit. But she says nothing, and when Nue’s sullen face appears under the dim yellow light, she turns towards the door in defense. Seija can’t even tell if the youkai is sad or angry or both, but she doesn’t want to know.

Nue opens the door, lightly at first and then slamming it against the cinderblock wall. Nervously, Seija walks in after her, and watches as Nue walks over to the bed and promptly buries her face in the pillows.

“Uuuuuuughhhhhh,” she groans, muffled by the ample amount of blankets on her bed. Seija sits down at the desk, which is admittedly much less comfortable than the bed, and kicks her feet up on the side of the bookshelf.

“Quit that,” Nue snaps, and Seija flinches. Immediately she takes her feet down, crossing them under the table. She almost wants to ask, and she’s getting closer to the way she wants to word the question, but it doesn’t come out until Nue finally says it out loud.

“I just don’t want to kill anyone.”

Seija gives her a skeptical look.

“I mean, I knew I would have to do something, but— there were other ways I could have done it, really,” she continues, hesitantly. “Like, didn’t I have those synaptic scramblers the whole time? Why didn’t I think of using that?”

“You were under serious pressure, Nue, that’s not something I would have done either.”

“I just didn’t… when I went into this I didn’t expect that I would be killing _people._ I mean, she looked like a person that had her own importance. But everyone does, so I can’t just…” Nue trails off, then sighs. “I’m not quitting, I want you to know that, but I don’t wanna kill.”

“It’s not like you had a choice,” Seija says, in a monotone. Things seem much more black and white now that she’s out of the situation, now that Reisen is dead, and she realizes quickly that she’s not feeling the same regret as Nue is, right now. “You know we would have died. It was her or us.”

“But I _did_ have a choice,” Nue shouts with a sharp movement of her hand, and a pillow falls off the bed. “I could have done something.”

“Not true.”

“I _killed_ a person.”

“So?”

There’s a long silence between them, thick and condensed. Nue turns around and stares directly at Seija, her eyes a searing anger.

“I’ve killed people before, too, it’s not a big deal—”

“You don’t _understand,_ ” Nue yells, and Seija drops her sentence. “Listen. I used to be an assassin. I used to do this kind of shit for a _living._ I don’t want it anymore.”

Seija stays quiet. She had nearly forgotten that part of Nue’s past. The scars between her fingers, like she had been holding knives.

“You should be used to it,” she finally says, but her voice is unusually tentative.

“You don’t get used to it.” Nue’s voice, however, is cold and hard as iron. “You never do. Even if it’s a thing you do for a job. I remember the looks on all of their faces. There was so much fear… I couldn’t believe I was doing it. I had to depersonalize, to keep my own conscience out of the job. Because I— the real me didn’t want it anymore. That’s why I was so surprised when she let me quit. When she didn’t kill me, for needing to leave.”

“Who didn’t kill you?”

“The… person I was working for.” Nue looks to the side. “Even I had morals to keep. When things got out of hand… I left, and she let me.”

Seija nods, her eyes narrowing.

“I chose to work with you, so I’ll go wherever you do. I’ll follow this job till the ends of the earth. But,” Nue says, looking down, wringing her hands, “I won’t kill anyone anymore.”

It’s understandable, even though Seija can’t say she feels the same way. Nue _chose_ this— she has affirmed this over and over. _So,_ Seija thinks, _I might as well give her a reason to choose it._

Nue looks at her, and Seija nods, slowly.

“I’ll make sure you don’t have to,” she says, quietly, almost unsure. But Nue’s face gains a look of sheer relief.

“Thanks,” she says. And by the tone of her voice, Seija can be sure she means it.

 

* * *

 

She’s not surprised to see the light in one of the hallways is still on. _Reisen must have been working overtime,_ is her main thought process when this happens. But Reisen’s never been the type to leave the light on unless something had gotten out of hand— she always makes sure all ends are tied up before she leaves. _Maybe she was staying overnight?_ The Lunarian starts, before she turns the corner and sees it.

Under the flickering light, a black explosion mark on the linoleum floor. Blood. And the remains of a skirt and a metal nametag.

Reisen U. Inaba.

Eirin Yagokoro feels her artificial heart stop.

 

The last time she panicked like this was when Kaguya went back to the moon. The princess was someone Eirin needed to protect; inside her, a desire to cling, to go wherever she went, to make sure no one would ever hurt the princess again. But Kaguya had a job to take up in the Lunar Capital, and Eirin needed to stay behind for the sake of Gensokyo City. The princess had stayed long enough, and now the city was collapsing in on itself, and it was becoming too dangerous for her to remain there. Kaguya had smiled sadly, told Eirin that things were going to be okay, and that she was leaving Reisen and Tewi in her hands. Then, reaching behind her back, she hung a necklace over Eirin’s head, pulling her braid softly over it. A moon crystal, one that Kaguya had been keeping for centuries, weighted Eirin’s neck comfortingly as a pendant. 

Kaguya had waved and turned around, as Eirin remained on land, and she never looked back. As if she would turn to stone if she did.

 

Now, the Lunarian clutches the crystal pendant in her right hand, blinking back memories of tears. Kaguya had left Reisen in her hands. In _her_ hands. A surge of magma-hot anger wells up inside her. She crouches, examining the space where Reisen used to be.

_Whoever it was,_ she thinks spitefully, _they were smart enough to blow up the evidence._ She has experience in reading ballistic fingerprints, but now that Reisen’s body is gone, there’s nothing left to observe, save for the blood on the floor and the darkened explosion marks. Already checked the security cams; nothing to report there. She does, however, notice that the emergency building clearer was set off at some point. Reisen was the only one who had it, other than the AI herself. She hopes to herself that whoever murdered Reisen had died here as well. Maybe she was planning to stay there, making sure the culprit remained in the building, to wait till the neurotoxin hit.

Eirin wouldn’t be surprised. Reisen had a self-preservation instinct that sometimes malfunctioned.

She runs her thumb over the crystal pendant, for safety, and swears to herself that she will not let Reisen’s killer continue to live. 

 

* * *

 

A calm dusklight shines through the stained glass windows of Chireiden. The palace stands still, underground, where the modernization that envelops most of the city has not yet touched. It’s calm, down there— what they would call old-fashioned up in the higher city. Something not yet enveloped by the flashing pace of movements, the unpolished scaffolding and neon lights. It feels like dust, like wood and home.

The Telepath sits in her rocking chair, knitting, her eyes kept downwards. A cat yawns and lets out a loud meow at the doorway to the library. She blinks; it’s a very familiar meow, an attention-seeking, impatient sound.

“Orin,” she calls, and the cat lights up and runs toward her rocking chair. Its two tails flash against each other as it reaches the chair’s legs, and nuzzles the AI’s leg affectionately. “Orin, come up here.”

_Do you need me for anything, Satori-sama?_

“I’m just a bit lonely. And I have a question on my mind.”

_Is it about Okuu?_

Satori’s face drops. Orin jumps into her lap, circles around herself for a little while before she lies down comfortably.

“Not exactly, but she has been worrying me lately as well.”

_Have you seen her? I wanna see her soon._

“I don’t think we will for a while. Most likely, she can’t forgive herself. And,” the AI sighs as she scratches behind the cat’s ears, “she’s probably worried that I’m angry with her.”

_Still? It’s been decades. She really is childish._

“She’s like a child, yes, but she’s smart. You know this. Orin, you love her, don’t you?”

The cat doesn’t reply for a while; instead, she presses her forehead into Satori’s leg.

_Yeah. I do. I really, really do. She’s my best friend. But it feels like she’s dead._

“I know she’s up there.”

Orin rolls over, looking directly up at Satori with questioning eyes.

_Have you seen her, Satori-sama?_

“Not just her. There have been other people there, too. It’s frightening. Something terrible happened in the Netherworld, but I can’t go to see it.”

_Why not?_

Satori sighs, runs her hand down Orin’s back. The cat starts to purr, and the AI hears her thought-voice getting sleepy.

“I can’t leave Chireiden. You know that.” She looks up at the ceiling, and starts to rock slowly back and forth. “And please don’t give me another why not. There are reasons I haven’t told even you.”

_Who’s up there? That you’re so scared of._

“I’m not _scared_ of her, per se,” Satori says, narrowing her lips. “I just don’t know what’s going on. Eirin and Yukari are fighting again— actively. They’ve both suffered sabotages on data and such. And now Hijiri is coming back, too…”

_Oh. Her?_

“Yes. Most everyone thought she was dead. But she lives in the Netherworld with Okuu. Who knows if they’ve confronted each other yet. She is very forgiving— at least, the side of her that still thinks is.”

_She doesn’t think? Can you not read her?_

“Only part of her. Ever since what happened, most of her thoughts have been repetitive, or static. As opposed to the other AIs, whom I can’t read at all, since their thoughts are completely encrypted. Hijiri’s, however, are…” She pauses. “Well, either way, if she is to be coming back, that means that something strange is happening here.”

_For a long time, things were really really quiet, right? Everyone was fighting, but really quietly. I think, Satori-sama, that things are getting weird because someone else has interfered._

“What do you mean by that, Orin?”

_I think the cycle would have kept going by itself if no one else got in on it. We all just kinda did the same things, you know, over and over again. But the fact that it’s getting shaken up now… we couldn’t do that on our own._

Satori thinks hard about that. Orin rolls over and purrs, as if she had said nothing, while the AI continues to rock back and forth. 

“You may be right. I don’t want to believe that there’s anyone else out there who is involved. But we don’t know everything yet. I don’t think we ever will.”

 

* * *

 

The sun has set already on Gensokyo, but Hell’s oldest fires continue to burn, casting a yellow light on everything. Nothing can avoid it; it reaches through bookshelves and into locked rooms, under heavy wooden doors. Chireiden has not had a visitor in over a hundred years.

Satori picks up the rotary phone. It hasn’t been used in ages; she swipes her finger over it, and a layer of dust falls and gathers on her hand. Now, more than ever, change is coming, and, she decides as her finger rests in the rotary, she will not let it overtake her.

“This is Youkai Mountain Internal Security. Are you looking for a hacker?”

“I am the Telepath, the AI of Chireiden. Please forward this call to the most experienced cybermercenary you have.”

A ruffling sound on the other end of the line. Murmurs, incomprehensible, and then a click.

Satori sets the phone down on the table, face up, and waits. Then, a somewhat bored-sounding voice.

“Heard you were looking for a hacker.”

“I am,” the AI responds. The person on the other end of the line breathes out. “Who am I speaking to?”

“Seija. Kijin Seija, experienced cybermercenary.”

“I would like to meet with you to schedule an intel run in the next week.”

“Sounds fine. Who’s the target?”

“Yakumo Enterprises.”

 

The lights in the halls of Chireiden go out, one by one.


	12. duplicate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eirin makes the connections, and Seija and Nue find refuge in Chireiden until yet another disaster strikes.

 

Eirin figures it out.

It’s a prodding feeling at first, a sensation that something is distinctly wrong with some of the recent happenings, but for the longest time her processes were searching through the records and couldn’t find much of anything that backed up her hypothesis. But she knows that sometimes her organic processes can lead her places her AI usually wouldn’t, so she shuts off the database search and starts thinking about what her gut is really saying.

The death of Reisen. The stock drop directly after she hired the hackers for the run on Yakumo. The retaliation that Yakumo gave— that must have been why Reisen died. It’s only been weeks apart. Quickly, she forms an idea. 

 _The hackers._ What were their names? She remembers the date— she hasn’t hired anyone else since then. But three weeks ago, when she recruited them, there’s absolutely nothing on the database. Her eyes widen. Who could do that? She _knew_ there was something fishy about them. Mercenaries are supposed to be indebted to no one, they’re supposed to do their mission and then get out of the entire situation. But this is different.

What were their _names?_ Two of them, a tengu-shaped one, though her mannerisms weren’t quite the same as the other tengu she had worked with. There was something more sharp-edged there. And the other— an oni? A human?

Eirin pauses.

An _amanojaku._

They’ve always been gifted hackers, but they’re contrarians at heart. Born from hatred and nonconformity. She should have _known;_ she could have guessed it earlier. A hot surge of rage bubbles up inside Eirin. She doesn’t even think of calling Satori— right now they’re the only two in the past five that aren’t completely hostile to each other, and Eirin usually feels the need to warn her of any menaces— instead, she’s so angry, _unnaturally_ so, that she picks up the receiver, and one name comes to mind.

Seija Kijin.

She and whoever that other one was. They killed Reisen. _They_ did it.

Eirin Yagokoro slams down the receiver, and immediately starts to search.

 

* * *

 

When the Lunarian finds them, Seija and Nue are back in the endless data towers of Yakumo, laughing silently at each other and almost effortlessly cracking open vaults.

The silence of the medium is compounded by Seija’s ever-present cackling, as her gloved hands reach into by-now familiar traps. After just one run she has memorized the formulas, easily pulling apart security without much of a second thought. Yakumo’s data is less secure because of the sheer deadliness of the entry security, which is, by and large, a Very Bad strategy. She silently thanks the oversight of what is apparently the most powerful AI out there.

Nue’s shadow moves along hers in symmetry, from the overworld. She’s grown so confident in her operations that she has started to treat them like a game. Instead of a dangerous and potentially fatal data archive, she seems to picture it like a very large match of “do the coolest stunts on your way to Point B from Point A.” Seija almost wants to scold her for it, but Nue looks like she’s having so much _fun,_ and Seija’s not much better either. Sometimes she forgets that Nue is even there, and dials back into focus only to see her hanging upside-down off of some railing. 

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** hey get down from there flipping is my job  
>  **HeianAlien:** awwwwwwwwwwwww

 

Of course Seija realizes that this is serious business. But thinking of it that way is so limiting. As an amanojaku she’s always found a way to turn things on their heads, and the oppressive atmosphere of Yakumo’s archives disappears under Seija’s complete exhilaration and freedom. This is the only kind of happiness she wants. Chaos in the place of order, playful maliciousness springing from where restraint and gravity once lay. 

Nue hops from vault to vault, as Seija cracks each one open, a stomping, twirling game of call and response— and then, everything falls apart.

 

Something explodes, from above them. Pieces of blown-apart metal start to rain from the endless darkness. Seija nearly screams, her thought process completely redirecting, as Nue looks up and instantly darts away. Panic and fear sets in. Another vault explodes in a shower of debris and light.

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** holy shit HOLY SHTI NUE GET OUT GET OUT  
>  **HeianAlien:** fuck what is going on!!!!!!!!!  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** I DONT KNOW JSTU GET OUT JUST GET AS FAR AS YOU CAN  
>  **HeianAlien:** did they find us out?!??!?!?!  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** these arent yakumo explosions they owuldnt destroy all this shit to get us out SOMEOMNE ELSE IS HERE  
>  **HeianAlien:** oh god oh GHOD OKAY!!!!!!!!  
>  **HeianAlien:** FUCK WHAT ARE WE GONNAD O???????????  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** I DONT KNO WJUST FIND A SAFE SPACE AND FUCKIN HIDE

 

Things start to get fuzzy. Nue hurtles towards the nearest hallway at a screaming, desperate speed, but Seija looks up, and is completely transfixed on what she sees. Bright red and blue lasers, bullets of sheer energy spiraling out from above. They probably look different in meatspace, but from here Seija can see what they really are— points of concentrated heat and energy, poised to kill. It lights up the blackness above her in a way that is both mesmerizing and terrifying. _Beauty is terror_ , she remembers from somewhere, and no matter how she looks at it, it’s beautiful. 

She’s not sure where Nue is. But her head is fixed upwards, watching the deadly bullets spiral outwards in patterns like fireworks. Things start to fall from above. More debris, metal and rock, crumbling from the invisible ceiling, in green frameworks within the medium. They fall so fast that Seija can see the heat burning around them, like meteors from a passing comet.

Then, the entire ceiling is torn off in an explosion of light and delayed sound, and Seija _bolts._

 

She is so sure that death is coming for her that when she finds Nue huddled behind a crate of scrapped computers out for rebuilding, she nearly clings to the shadow. In a burst of panic, she wishes she could buzz out so she could actually _feel_ signs of life, so she could hold on to Nue instead of grasping at a simple silhouette. But they’re in different dimensions, and they’re both about to die.

This is not real. This is a dream. This is _also_ not something Yakumo programmed into the emergency system. Someone _else_ is attacking. And in a flash of thought, Seija knows who it is.

 

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** eientei. nue its eientei they found us out and now theyre trying to kill us in here  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** this isnt yakumo security this is an all out assault on yakumo  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** like theyre trying to gas us out of here they know were here   
>  **HeianAlien:** HOLY SFUCK  
>  **HeianAlien:** WHAT DO WE DO!!!!!  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** i dont know i feel like this might be it

 

Seija suddenly feels utter calm spread through her mind. She heard there was supposed to be a rush of adrenaline just before you die, but this definitely isn’t it. Instead, she feels ready. Accepting. Like she’s been waiting for this her whole life.

 

 

> **HeianAlien:** seij you need to buzz out you can leave that way you’re at the entrance.  
>  **HeianAlien:** thats the only way you’re going to get out of here alive  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** i cant do that  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** im not just gonna leave you here  
>  **HeianAlien:** i told you i’d go along with you till the end, right?  
>  **HeianAlien:** i’d do anything i’m literally ready to die for this  
>  **HeianAlien:** for you  
>  **HeianAlien:** just go seija you need this

 

Seija feels her material body take a deep breath.

 

> **inverse-monarchy:** no

 

Nue curls up, as small as she can, directly into herself. She doesn't even argue. Seija doesn’t say anything more, and neither does Nue. 

She knows what she signed up for.

 

A gap opens up directly below them, and Seija can’t even bring herself to scream.

 

* * *

 

They land in a dark hallway, smelling of dust and wood— something so unfamiliar that Seija almost doesn’t recognize it at first. There’s stained glass for windows, a glow cast into the hallways that’s almost hypnotizing, gentle and almost unreal compared to what she just witnessed. That’s when she realizes she’s back in meatspace. Frantically, she checks for her rig, and finds that it’s still safely in her inside pocket.

It’s like a time machine down here, something Seija has never experienced before. She’s too young to remember, but they used to say that once, nothing was built from steel. There were lights that burned like candles, and mansion corridors, long and carpeted and twisting. Of course, they were all torn down when Gensokyo became modernized, but they existed— the one around Misty Lake was the most famous. There were some underground, of course, and in Makai, but Makai has long been sealed off from modern Gensokyo, and those mansions were quickly forgotten. But she’s heard that the ones underground are still as ancient and preserved as they were centuries ago, dust floating in the light from the colored windows, gas lamps and huge wooden bookshelves.

This must be it, then, Seija thinks, and looks out the window. A harsh, all-engulfing glow, from below the foundation itself, like the sun is always setting. 

“Where are we?”

Nue’s voice breaks the silence of the hallway. Seija sighs in relief. Nue is still alive.

“I think we’re in the underground.”

“You are, yes.”

Seija turns around quickly, poised to fight. But the voice is gentle and obviously not looking for trouble. A somewhat ethereal, short woman, dressed childishly, with what looks like a large eyeball darting around in its socket, connected to her body by levitating tubes— the image is so contrasting that Seija recoils. But it looks to be somewhat friendly, or at least not aggressive.

“Hello, yes, I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking ‘who is this small unthreatening person?’ It’s okay, I can do the talking for you since it’s easier.”

“Wait, let me talk—”

“You’re thinking ‘wait, how did we get here and why is the underground still so old?’ An AI gapped you here, one of my old friends.” She nods gently. “And yes to answer your question that you haven’t asked yet, I am an AI, the third of Chireiden, the Telepath. But since you are not threatening to me I will let you call me Satori, since that is the name I had before I became an AI.”

“Are you just going to hold your own conversation—”

“I can tell that one of you does not have ill intent, and the other only has ill intent because their genetic makeup requires them to. You are an amanojaku, yes? So I understand. All your thoughts are flipped.”

Nue frowns at Satori, and the little AI stops in her tracks.

“Ah, I’m very sorry, I’m still not used to talking to people. You can talk now, and I will try not to interrupt you.”

“Uh…” Seija isn’t even sure what to ask. “So you’re the third AI, and who gapped us here? And also, what is this place? It’s covered in—” Seija coughs— “—cat hair.”

“Yes, that is the fault of one or more of my cats.”

“You have _cats?_ ” Nue pipes up. “I haven’t heard of anyone with cats in four hundred years.”

“Ah, you are very old, are you not?” Satori giggles. It’s almost impossible to be angry at someone this innocent. “I can understand. Above ground everything is modern and it intimidates me. I’m not very good at talking, and the world above is very large and dangerous and scary. I quite like it down here. Also, I can talk to my cats.”

Seija almost _smiles._

“You are thinking, ‘Okay, but who is the AI who gapped us here?’ Her name is Yukari, but most call her the Ancient. She controls Yakumo. She is very intimidating and eldritch and generally very scary. I do not know why she decided to bring you here. I cannot read her from this far away.”

Satori talks very quietly, and beckons both of them to follow her, into what looks like a huge library. Towering bookshelves, stocked with all manner of old tomes. She gestures for them to sit down, and both of them lie back on a paisley-patterned couch. A small black cat with two tails leaps off of a nearby rocking chair and rubs up against Satori’s leg.

“It is all right, Orin. They are nice.”

The cat makes a circle around her leg, and quietly hisses at Seija.

“She says she needs a reason to trust you before she can let you near me. She’s very loyal… she’s my dearest pet.”

Orin meows, and then darts out of the room as Satori sits down. Nue sneezes.

“I am going to answer your questions, but some of these things are confidential so I cannot tell you.” 

Seija rolls her eyes at the sheer redundancy.

“First of all, I am the AI you talked on the phone with. It took me much courage to call. Also, I know your plan. But I think that it is a very beneficial thing.”

“Wh—”

“Some very suspicious things have been going on with the five— or I should say, four— AIs here, and we have all somehow turned against each other and broken our promise to make a better Gensokyo. I want to start things anew, but I am too timid, and the other AIs are much more powerful than I, so there’s really not much I can do about it. But you,” Satori says, looking at her hands, “you may not be doing it for the same reasons, but the outcome is the same. You want to bring down the four AI-controlled companies, correct?”

“Yeah, but not for any whole self-righteous common good bullshit reason,” Seija frowns, but Nue pulls her back. “I’m just doin’ it because I hate the way it works and I like to see things crash and burn.”

“You’re certainly an honest one. I could read all that already. I like honest people. They don’t give me reason to fear, because their thoughts and their words are the same.” Satori smiles, gently, and Seija has an urge both to punch her in the face and hug her.

“Wait,” Nue says. “Can I ask you something?”

“Do you want to talk or do you want me to answer it?”

Nue sighs, but it’s almost an endearingly frustrated sigh. “I can tell you. Is your mind reading thing an AI program, or was it always there?”

Satori’s third eye swivels, and blinks. It answers the question for Seija, but Nue doesn’t seem to get it. “I was born with this curse. I was originally a type of youkai called a satori. I know, my name is very redundant, but I’ve thought about changing it and nothing comes up.”

“Huh.”

“So yes, I have always been able to read minds. People have hated me for it, so I retreated here.” She sighs, moves out of her chair to pick up a book. “I’ve been very comfortable here.”

“People hated you? Why?” Nue asks. Seija wants to hit herself in the face.

“No one really wants to be around a mind-reader, isn’t that so? People are afraid of what is in their own minds being seen by someone else. There are often very disturbing or private thoughts. But I do not blame them.” She nods, and the heavy door cracks open as the two-tailed cat slips back into the room. “Oh, here’s Orin,” she smiles, and beckons the cat to her lap.

Nue relaxes back on the dusty couch. Seija, somehow, feels sorry for Satori. But she looks very satisfied in her loneliness, comfortable with the quiet and the pets for company.

“Orin, have you seen anything?”

The cat rolls over on Satori’s lap and opens its mouth. Satori’s eyes go wide.

“Oh no.” She picks up Orin, sets the cat down on the carpet, and stands up. “You two, I’m very sorry, but you must leave immediately. I’m sorry I could not be of much assistance, but I can feel something very very bad is going to happen.”

 

Five seconds after the words fall from Satori’s mouth, the hallway behind them collapses in with a tremendous sound.

“Oh,” she says, and a bullet of light energy streaks through the wall like a meteor and collides head-on with Satori. She wobbles, falls to the ground, then stands back up almost unhurt. “I think she has forgotten where my core is. She was the one who made it, after all.”

Just as she says this, another explosion. It’s way behind them, but Satori’s eyes go blank, like the light in them was suddenly switched off. 

“Never mind,” she manages to breathe, dumbfounded, before her knees give out.

 

Nue’s jaw drops. Seija grabs her bony wrist, and turns to run.

 

* * *

 

“The thing is,” Seija pants, as she stops to rest in the corner of a hallway, “their cores are always located somewhere else.”

“Like remote centers of consciousness?”

“Exactly.” She grips her knees, breathing hard. “And when that core is damaged, there’s basically not much you can do.”

“Do you know what she meant by _five_?”

“Five AIs?”

“Yeah,” Nue asks. Her tone is nervous, twitchy.

“I have no idea.” Seija stands up, catching her breath. “Come on, we gotta go. They’re rooting us out.”

Nue nods, and sets off, lifting herself just off the ground so she can run faster. Seija follows— truly flying is dangerous when there’s so much debris everywhere, so they’ve developed a way of half-dashing. Turning the corner, Seija’s sneakers make a sharp noise as she touches the wooden floor and leaps over in a direct right angle. She’s so focused on dodging the explosions behind them that she doesn’t notice when she slams directly into someone.

“Wait—”

The figure is a little bit taller than Satori, with the same frizzy hair, only in a light green color. She shows absolutely no pain as Seija steps back, no expression on her face other than a quiet, unknowing smile.

And then her third eye swivels into view, and Seija darts backwards.

“Who aaaare you?” the little girl asks. “Where’s my sisteeeer?”

Seija looks back at Nue, who is just as clueless. The girl in front of them feels empty, her words hollow and echoing.

“I don’t work unless my sister is aroooound,” she continues. “Can you tell me where she iiiiis?”

“Uh…”

Seija freezes. A large beam of wood falls from the ceiling twenty feet behind them.

“Sorry,” she says, and wrenches herself away, back into the endless hall. A red light starts to shine from outside the window. Sirens start to sound, long blaring klaxons. There’s a rumbling in the ground, like the house is about to detach itself from the earth. The girl stands in the hallway, still staring at them as they disappear down the hall.

“Sister?”

 

* * *

 

In the Eientei monitoring room, the Lunarian leans over the control panel to look at the scene unfolding in front of her, and notices a lone shape standing in the middle of the hallway. The rubble falls directly around her but never hits her, like there’s some sort of force field surrounding the small girl. She’s in the middle of the hallway, frozen still, as planks of wood and terrible amounts of brick deflect off her.

A feeling of dread comes up through Eirin’s entire system.

“Oh no _,_ ” she whispers. “I didn’t think she was still… oh, _no_.”

Then the girl turns directly towards Eirin, like she can see her through the cameras. She stares straight through hundreds of miles of cyberspace, her eyes focused, blank and emotionless.

And then the monitor powers down.

“Oh, God, _no._ ”

 

 


	13. kindling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seija and Nue risk everything, a familiar face asks for a favor, and the fourth AI shows herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so nano fucked me up but hey at least you got to see five chapters in a month right????????  
> i'm sorry they weren't halfway as quality as the beginning, that kinda happens when you need to write 1667 words a day  
> anyway back to the regular update schedule which is: 
> 
> \- when i am inspired  
> \- when i have nothing left to procrastinate on  
> \- when i can get out of bed  
> \- when i feel like it
> 
> thanks for sticking with me

 

Koishi Komeiji is not supposed to be here.

The alternate to her more stabilized, self-aware sister, known to Chireiden employees as the Younger, Koishi was a beta AI that never gained her own personality or self-awareness. She was the test, to see if Satori could work with another AI, but the conversion went wrong because she had no thoughts as an organic being, and so could not connect to the process with her own consent. Her AI ran on randomized numbers, pulled from a simplistic generator within her data, and so she became dangerous without even knowing it. Satori knew that she could not function alongside her, purely because of what had happened while Koishi was still living.

Satori let Koishi stay in a sealed upper level of Chireiden, going up to visit and play most days when she was not working actively. She had set Koishi as a backup, simply because she was confident that she could not be killed just as easily as that. If anything went wrong, Koishi would take over, but only within the short period of time that it took for Satori to recover. She was a resilient AI; her core could not be completely corrupted, and it was in a very safe place. 

She had only expected to defend herself from hackers and rebels, and never from the same person who created her core in the first place.

Koishi is impulsive and hasty, doing whatever comes to mind first. She was always like that. It was never a good idea for her to run a corporation, but Satori was sure she would never have to. No other corporation save Eirin knows of her existence. Yukari? That was one of the things she never divined. Byakuren wasn’t one to worry about those types of things, either. And the other never really seemed to notice either— she was too wrapped up in her own quest for power.

It goes through Satori’s half-broken consciousness that maybe, just maybe, she was a little bit too prideful for her own good.

 

* * *

 

Seija feels the urge to buzz in, to really witness what is happening around them beyond the rubble and broken stone. In the medium, those things are lined in green mesh, and she can switch that view off any time. It’s definitely a bad idea, yes, especially since there’s so much of it and moving through the medium and meatspace at the same time requires a bit of coordination, but Seija wants to see past it, see the inner workings of everything that’s collapsing. 

The image of those blank eyes still haunts her. There was nothing in there, not even a flash of self-recognition. They were only mirrors, reflectors of the world around her. Seija remembers the rumors— a younger sister. An AI with absolutely no sense of self, something that couldn’t be called an AI at all. Sealed within Chireiden— was that her? Quickly, she turns to Nue as they drift off the ground.

“I think that other kid is the backup.”

“Huh?” Nue looks puzzled. “Oh, you mean the one we saw in the hall? I didn’t know the corp AIs had backups…”

“You must have heard the rumors, right? An AI that doesn’t function and runs on randomized numbers.”

“Oh,” Nue says, and her eyes go wide. “That’s kind of a problem. I mean, maybe it’s better than just not having a backup at all, but…”

“I think we saw her. She doesn’t even have any thoughts.”

Nue half-shrugs. “If she’s dangerous she would have attacked us.”

Seija almost agrees, but then the realization hits like a brick. “I don’t think she was programmed to be dangerous. I don’t think she even _knows_ what dangerous means.”

_And that’s why,_ she finishes the sentence in her head, _she is as dangerous as she is._

The hallway opens up into a huge expanse, chapel-like, with stained glass windows for a ceiling. Light pours in from above, distorted and technicolor. It’s breathtaking, so much that Seija feels weighted down. Sighing, she reaches over behind her ear.

“What are you doing?” Nue asks, a bit of force in her voice.

“Buzzing in. I wanna see things up close.”

“I don’t think that’s a good—”

Seija grins maliciously, and hooks up the connector.

 

Instantly, she’s plummeting through a maze of multicolored glowing lights, from the ceiling down to the ground. The echoes of her footsteps off the brick walls in meatspace are no longer as loud as they were; instead, a faraway-sounding thump, like a heartbeat, or a drum, beats in place. Nue’s shadow throws her hands up defeatedly, turns to look at Seija in what she can only assume is an exasperated expression, and Seija laughs soundlessly into the brightness of the medium.

 

> **HeianAlien:** that is a very bad idea.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** so what  
>  **HeianAlien:** seija kijin, if you get yourself killed in the medium, i will personally go in there myself and rekill you and sit on your dead body  
>  **HeianAlien:** and take no personal responsibility for you whatsoever.  
>  **inverse-monarchy:** duly noted

 

The sense of panic within her has faded into joy, as she follows Nue through a crumbling hallway full of light and echoes. She watches as her partner’s silhouette reaches behind her ear as well, an invisible but certainly-present grin on her face.

 

> **HeianAlien:** or, i could just go with you myself.

 

Seija whoops as Nue’s form, full color, appears by her side. Now that they’re both in the medium, they can talk freely without having to use a chat client. Seija takes this as a blessing; Nue is always typing slower than is best for her because of her sheer _need_ to always type in correct punctuation and grammar. Plus, she thinks to herself, and immediately becomes embarrassed. _Plus, I get to hear her voice._

“Okay okay okay,” Nue shouts. “I checked the map and we’re really only leading Eirin in circles so we can lose her and then somehow get the fuck out of here.”

“How do you even know where we’re going without the map on you at all times?”

“I have this thing called,” Nue smirks, “a good sense of direction. Plus, all the corridors connect to each other and there’s really no dead ends in this place. It’s like a huge tangle of optical illusions up in here.”

“I’m getting the feeling that we’ve been doing this for hours.”

“Nah,” she says, dismissively. “It’s only been forty minutes or so. Time seems to pass slower when you’re running. Let’s make this quick, though.”

“Since there’s more rubble than activity in here…”

“We could probably lose her if we went a little more risky,” Nue finishes, and Seija suppresses the urge to give her a high-five. “All right, operation Fuck You Eirin starts now.”

Seija nods, and falls straight forward. A firework pattern of light bullets explode from about a hundred yards behind them, but Seija knows they’re too far away to cause any personal damage. Some of them are homing, but they fade out way before they can reach, and Seija snickers audibly at them. Nue has that huge, toothy grin on her face, the one that means Nue is completely immersed and ready for anything, the one Seija has grown to love. 

“Okay, bear right, she’s catching up and—” Nue’s voice cuts off, as a large rock framed in green wire narrowly misses her from the back. “Shit. We need to get back down to the first floor.”

“You scared me there.”

“It’s not like you to worry about me.”

“It is now,” Seija fires back, and launches herself around the corner. The lights grow dimmer, here— there’s a darkness creeping in from somewhere, a staircase filled with it on their left. It’s funny, Seija thinks, how the lack of light in some places can transfer to the medium’s perception. And unlike the fluid single-directional change from dark to light in meatspace, blackness can leak out into brightness, blurring the lines the other way around.

“Turn left,” Nue shouts, and both of them do. The staircase becomes dark, seemingly endless, as Seija plummets from the third to the first floor. But it ends soon, as she sees the color swirling out from under the door— the door. A door. It’s shut. The door to the first floor is shut.

The door is shut.

Seija yelps in surprise, tries to kick through it, but security is tight and she doesn’t have the time to break the code. Then the light comes on in the stairway, filling the medium with sheer white. Nue grimaces, shuts her eyes.

“God _damn_ it,” Seija screams. “Open!”

The door doesn’t budge for another ten seconds, in which Seija hears the explosions get even closer. And then, it slides open, as if it were remote-controlled. It hits, then, and Seija’s jaw almost drops. 

The girl.

“Nue,” she yells. “Nue, it might be the AI that did it. She’s causing the doors to shut and the lights to go off and on. What if she…”

“…accidentally triggered security,” Nue whispers, and then the alarms start ringing. “Oh, _shit_!”

 

She doesn’t even see it coming.

The virus activates before she can get out of the room. All the doors are closed. Seija knows that the little AI isn’t doing this on purpose, but it doesn’t stop her from screaming in anger as the worm-like thing clings to her. Hands clawing at her own body, she attempts to wrench it from where it hooks onto her stomach. She looks around for Nue— and she’s a shadow again. She must have buzzed out as soon as the alarm went off.

Seija screams in agony as a bright-white pain rips through her. Her brain is a mess. She doesn’t know how to connect her thoughts with her actions, and her limbs aren’t receiving the signals right. In a last-ditch attempt to preserve her life, she fumbles around before she finally buzzes herself out and collapses onto the wooden floor.

 

* * *

 

“Augh— argh—”

She sits up. Her vision is blurring, her eyes aren’t blinking right. She quickly does a full-body inventory: hands are shaking, stomach feels like something ripped a hole in it, head is pounding and not really doing its _job,_ legs are mostly immobile. She feels like she’s dying.

Dazed, she looks over to the pile of debris against the corner of the wall, and drags herself over to where a single hand reaches its way out between the wooden bars and stone.

“Seija?” 

The voice comes, weak and wavering, from inside it.

“Nue?” she manages to reply.

“Oh, god, _Seij_ , I thought you were—”

“Me too.”

“Where did tiny AI go?” Nue’s voice chokes up and she begins to cough, a long and rasping sound. “I think Eirin stopped shooting.”

“She stopped shooting because she thought—” Seija leans over as a sudden surge of nausea moves through her whole body— “—we were dead. Nue, we have to get out of here. Tiny AI is probably still setting off random processes somewhere. Just… with less frequency.”

Nue goes silent.

“Seija,” she finally says, her voice a whisper. “I think we’re going to die.”

“What— no, this isn’t the worst of it. We _can’t_ die. Not here,” Seija lurches over, her voice cracking in her throat. “Not here.”

“You’re too weak to stand up, and my legs are trapped. Also, I think my arm is broken. I can’t get out.”

“So what—”

“Can we just wait… here… for a little while?”

Seija’s eyes start to water. She can’t argue with Nue, now that she’s like this. Defeated, she nods, and slumps down against the pile of debris.

 

* * *

 

 

Between the cracks of the double doors, a cat peers out into the room. It flinches, then slowly moves towards the wreckage. Two people sleeping there— oh, it knows those faces. Are they sleeping, or are they dead?

Orin stands up on her back feet and feels herself shoot up to human size. She tiptoes closer to them, one inside the pile, the other unmoving against it. The two people Satori was talking with. She crouches down, examines Seija for signs of life.

“Hey, sis,” Orin says, once she’s sure Seija’s still breathing. “Can you move?”

“No, not really,” Seija groans. “Nue— she’s in there— can you get her out? She’s—”

“Yeah, but I need to put ya somewhere else first. You can’t just be lying on the pile if I’m going to disassemble it.” Orin picks her up from under her arms, so that her feet just barely touch the ground, and drags her over to the opposite wall. Seija gives a grunt as Orin lets her sit down again. “Just stay there for now, okay?”

Seija nods weakly, then collapses into herself again, like a doll unable to support its own weight. Orin’s tails twitch, and she starts to pull out blocks of wood and two-by-fours from the Jenga-like pile of wreckage. Piece by piece, the structure falls apart; she removes the stone pieces before they can fall and crush the person lying underneath, and pushes the dust and insulation away to reveal a familiar figure, curled up in fetal position, her arm looking disjointed, her legs bruised from pressure.

“Are you still alive?” Orin asks, and then bends down to sniff her face. “Oh. Yeah. Here, let me help ya get up.”

Seija watches, her vision fuzzy, as Orin pulls Nue’s body from the wreck and drags her back over to her side of the wall. Nue’s eyes open, blink rapidly, and then she sneezes.

“So much dust,” she grumbles. Her arm is definitely broken, bent in a way that arms aren’t quite supposed to be. She looks like she’s just woken up, the way her eyelids flutter confusedly, and her shins look flat from being trapped for so long. “I can’t feel my legs,” she complains, in her usual half-nasal tone, and Seija feels like crying.

“Jeez, Nue,” she grimaces, blinking the dust out of her eyes. “Don’t worry me like that ever again.”

“Couldn’t help it,” Nue coughs, the quirk of her eyebrow noticeable even through Seija’s watery eyes. “How are we gonna get outta here? I’ve got one broken arm and probably more than one bruised rib and… an awful fucking headache.”

“I can’t even tell what anyone’s saying,” Seija answers numbly, “my brain got so fucked up. Can’t get us outta this one.”

“I can help you!”

Seija’s head snaps up— she immediately regrets the sudden movement, as her head feels like it’s trembling inside her skull— but she had completely forgotten Orin was there until just a moment ago.

“Oooops,” she grins, and it’s mildly endearing but also unsettling, how she seems to speak without using her mouth. “Sorry to startle ya, sis. Anyway, yeah, I said I could help you, and I will. But there’s like, one thing you gotta do for me in return.”

Seija furrows her eyebrows. “Is this how you always function? Saving people’s lives in return for favors?” 

Nue kicks Seija’s foot, as if to say, _keep quiet or we won’t get out of this._

“Yeah, actually,” Orin says, with a nonchalant smile on her face. Seija makes an expression between bewilderment and approval. “Listen, I can take ya up to Hakugyokurou. My girlfr— best friend, Okuu, lives up there. She won’t come down because she thinks we won’t forgive her, but we do, and I miss her, and uh… so…” Orin pauses, folding her arms behind her back, looking bashful. “So help me out, will ya?”

Nue shrugs halfheartedly. “Yeah, okay. So what do we do? Convince her to go back?”

“Whatever you can do,” Orin says, slightly miffed at Nue’s tone. “I miss her. I really, really do. So if you can get her to come back…” She visibly bites her lip, her face dropping. Seija nods at Nue, confirming.

“Will do. Can you take us up there?”

Orin’s eyes visibly widen, and a large smile splits her face. “Yeah! Of course!”

 

* * *

 

They end up within the mist-covered ruins at the center of Hakugyokurou, the labyrinthine district of Myouren. Still slumped against the wall, Seija pushes her hands against the cracked-marble ground, forcing herself to stand. Dizziness surges up into her head as she makes it to her feet— she’s still weak, but she can somehow keep herself upright, and as she takes a step forward, Nue jumps to her feet.

Seija looks back. Nue’s standing there, arm hanging limply at her side, but her legs are strong and she’s almost bouncing on her toes like she used to. Seija tweaks an eyebrow.

“You look like you just got three years younger.”

“Wow, that doesn’t mean much to me at all,” Nue huffs. “But yeah. My wounds tend to heal faster than others.”

Seija grunts in jealousy, still adjusting to the feeling of her feet on the ground. The Netherworld is cold, much colder than it was down in Chireiden, and the contrast is so sharp that she feels her previously warm fingers go numb in seconds. They say the higher you go, the colder it gets, but Seija’s pretty sure there’s something else about this place that makes it this chilly— the lack of movement, the absence of life. After all, heat is movement at an atomic scale.

The echoes of her footsteps ring against the broken walls as Seija takes a few tentative steps forward. Nue turns to her, already a minute ahead, and smiles wide, her hand beckoning. Coughing, Seija shakes her head almost affectionately, and follows behind. The gravity of the situation seems weightless now, with Nue’s light movement over the stones lifting the atmosphere. It’s funny, she thinks, how her outlook on her entire life could change in an instant. Just hours ago she was ready to die, slumped against the nest of debris Nue was buried in— now, there’s life in her footsteps, her bones feel healed and unbruised just _watching._

They pace, through every corridor, careful not to kick up dust, walking slowly in circles through the labyrinth. It’s smaller on the inside than it looks, and soon they emerge from the entrance, looking out over their city from the floating remains of the Netherworld— and there’s light, from somewhere, through the cracks in a broken arch behind them. Streaks of it, from a sun hidden in clouds, solid-looking beams illuminating the dust. Seija turns her chin upwards, and watches as it casts the floating ash in a white-yellow glow.

“Do you have any idea where Orin said she’d be?” Nue calls out, from behind a pile of bricks.

“Nah, she didn’t tell us anything.”

“Did… did someone say Orin?”

Both Seija and Nue snap their heads around, caught off guard by the sudden voice. A ragged, pale-white face peeks out from behind a marble pillar, eyes blinking in bewilderment. Hesitantly, Seija nods, and beckons for her to come out.

She’s tall, and her body is built like she was once much more powerful than she is. Her hair is pitch-black but covered in dust, and as Seija looks to the side, her wings are too. The ribbon atop her head is frayed, silk almost to the point of unraveling.

“Are you Okuu?” Nue questions.

“Yes, I am, but you can call me Utsuho,” the girl replies, keeping her gaze lowered. “I heard you talking about Orin?”

“Yup. She wanted you to come back,” Seija blurts, and Utsuho’s eyes visibly widen. “Some shit has gone down at Chireiden, and Orin needs you there.”

“Now?”

Seija nods.

“So she doesn’t hate me?”

“No,” Nue adds. “And she’s not just calling you because she needs you for reparations. She misses you, Utsuho. She and Satori both.”

Utsuho clasps her hands tightly, and Seija can see tears welling at the corners of her eyes. “I can go back?”

Nue and Seija look at each other, and give a nod of confirmation.

“Yeah,” Seija finally says. “You’ve always been able to, but they need you more than ever now.”

Utsuho blinks back tears, and a small smile works at the corner of her mouth. “I gotta help them,” she says, though it’s more talking to herself than anyone else right now. “I gotta help them, Orin and Satori-sama are waiting for me,” and she hiccups, eyes wide, and then turns to Seija. “Thank you,” she says, and it’s so painfully sincere that Seija wants to claw her face off. “Thank you!”

Seija is about to offer a reply, before Utsuho springs off the edges of the floating ruins and takes off. Her black wings unfold in stark contrast; to the marble and ash of the ruins, and to the pale evening mist descending onto the Netherworld at dusk.

 

The silence lingers for a minute. Nue looks at Seija, her face solemn, nodding softly. The wind, previously absent, picks up.

They watch the sun go down, and the mist creeps in. From above, their world looks beautiful, a glimmering tapestry of lights and towers. The sun sinks below the crest of the horizon, and the light from it turns a terrifying red, then disappears. In silence, Seija watches, until the wind changes again— and as if the world had completed its turn already, a warm, uneasy glow comes up behind them, melting the sky over the scenery.

Seija turns slowly. The light is not from below them.

“Nue,” she whispers, but it seems Nue has already caught on. They’re facing the source of the light, shining from the center of the ruins, beams through cracks in broken walls. 

 

“You found me,” says a broken voice, as breathy as the wind through the ruins. They turn in unison, and face her.

She towers over both of them, her ragged dress caught in gusts, a cascade of purple-yellow hair spilling from over her shoulders. 

Nue’s jaw drops, and Seija pretends not to notice the liquid shine in her eyes.

 

“I am the Savior of Myouren," she says, and it clicks. "The fourth and final AI.”


	14. todestrieb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive (German: Todestrieb) is the drive towards death, self-destruction and the return to the inorganic."
> 
> Everything, all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOHOO this is the Big Chapter  
> it only took me about two months to get motivated enough to do this shit but i had a flash of inspiration while writing beside my Cute Partner Eirin and now chasers is active again!!!!!!!!!  
> shit goes down in this chapter so prepare yourself
> 
> THANKS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT UP TO THIS POINT!!!

“You?”

Seija is frozen, eyes fixed on the flickering presence before her. Nue doesn’t move— just keeps looking, straight forward, as if to avoid showing any emotion.

“ _You?_ You’re the fourth AI? I… wait,” Seija spits, looks down at her scuffed shoes. “Wait. I’ve met you before. Somewhere.”

“Hmm?” Byakuren lifts her eyes just as Seija finally raises her head, and the connection that is made immediately sends a jolt of recognition down Seija’s spine. “I don’t think we have met, at least not in reality…” She steeples her hands, looking gently up to the right, and then Seija notices her gaze settles on Nue. The AI’s eyes go wide and soft. Seija takes a step back, leaving Nue face-to-face with Byakuren, and she sees something in her partner’s eyes— a sort of hidden sadness, but not without assassin-like doubt. True to form, Nue’s shoulders tense, and she raises her hands minutely closer towards her body, as if she’s about to throw a guard up. Still, Seija can’t get her mind off the watering of those eyes, the _recognition_ that shone there, if only for a second.

“H-Hijiri,” Nue finally says, her hands moving towards her face, even more wary than before. Seija looks between her and the AI, those topaz-yellow eyes half-lidded, as if waiting for Nue to continue. “How… how long have you been here?”

“Ever since the nuclear incident,” Byakuren says quietly.

Seija’s gaze darts back and forth between the two of them. “Explain,” she growls, defensive, prickling at Nue’s quiet reluctance. 

“Well, where should I start then?” the AI muses. “Do you want the short version or the long version? You may have to sit down.”

Despite herself, Seija rolls her eyes. Nue is still expressionless, but fragile, like a porcelain mask. “Long, short, whatever, it’s fine. I just gotta know who you are and why you’re here. And why you didn’t exist for the longest fucking time.”

“Oh, I existed,” Byakuren assures her, her eyes suddenly going harder, a faint, well-hidden anger. “It just was never much of an existence. I live a half-life, now.”

“Half-life?” Seija repeats.

“Only half of me is truly alive.” Her fingers reach up to adjust the crooked circlet, a brushed-silver tiara of circuits and blinking lights. The crown of a half-broken mind. “I think there is something you should know. Seija.”

Seija doesn’t ever remember telling the AI her name. A chill traces its way down her spine, slow and torturous, something that freezes her in fear. She doesn’t even try to fight it— just stands, fixated on Byakuren’s closed eyes, afraid.

“I am not the last AI. There are two more.”

 

* * *

 

Koishi wakes up.

She had been dormant for a while after the attack on Chireiden. Her sister is still incapacitated, and she’s still languidly floating around when she opens her eyes. Quickly she remembers— there is a job to do. But the thought disappears as fast as it came, so rapid it couldn’t be called a thought at all. She picks up her feet, winds the veins of her closed third eye around her like ribbons, and drifts towards the control room from where she had been napping in the rubble of the old library.

A gentle meow reaches her ears. Koishi perks up, swivels her head in the direction it came from. Curious, she floats back into the hallway, and sees Orin emerge from the rubble, in the form of a tiny, double-tailed black cat. Behind her, the characteristic beating of wings.

“Orin! Hello!”

Orin does a noticeable double-take at seeing Koishi. She shifts up into a humanoid form, and promptly throws her arms over Koishi’s shoulders. “Koishi! You haven’t been out in a long time!”

“Yes! Long time no seeeee,” she giggles. 

“Just wait. Guess who else is here? I bet you haven’t seen _her_ in like, a hundred years!”

“Is it big sister?”

“No, silly,” Orin chides her. “You saw her a lot.”

“Umm… is it Okuu?”

The raven behind Orin shifts upward, straightens out her long back and stretches out her wings.

“It’s me!” she pipes, and Koishi flies straight into her.

“Okuu! Where have you beeeeen? I missed youuuu,” Koishi sighs, then does a little twirl out of Okuu’s arms.

“Veeeery far away,” Utsuho admits, shrugging her shoulders. Black feathers fall from her wings as she beats them excitedly, resting soft on the remains of the hardwood floor. “But I’m back now! Um, where’s Satori?”

“Big sister is sleeping,” Koishi tries. Utsuho’s face falls.

“You’re the only one I know who can help me get Satori-sama back in service,” Orin says, turning to her. “We don’t have much time.”

“Wow, coming right back into a rescue mission! Exciting!” Utsuho’s wings visibly perk, fluttering to clear the excess feathers. “I know where her core is. Hop on my back!”

Barely even hesitating, Orin pounces onto Utsuho’s sturdy back as the two of them rocket down the empty hallways. Koishi is left, watching as the pair go on a mission she doesn’t know how to comprehend. She smiles anyway, twirls back into the dusty library.

And then the explosions.

She’s knocked out of midair by a bullet point of light that penetrates the brick wall. It’s a small bullet, though, so she recovers fine, hoisting her arm up from the shock. Questioning, she looks around, only to see a column of light heading straight towards her, filling the entire hallway with blazing heat. Koishi closes her eyes hard, and opens them to a completely different hallway. A rumbling shakes the entire mansion; red lights start to filter in, bringing their alarms with them. She can hear the collapsing of stairways and passages from wherever she is. Deep inside of her, a twisting fear response.

There are many mechanisms within the control room. She teleports there, and immediately starts indiscriminately choosing options. It’s not so much _choosing_ as running a number generator, however, and Koishi smiles anyway, her fight or flight response still kicking. And she is going to fight.

She is going to fight.

 

* * *

 

“Then how many _are_ there?” Seija asks, incredulously. She can’t even bring herself to be angry— there’s so much she wants to know, so much to be explained. The mystery seems to only deepen the more Seija learns about it. It’s a puzzle, a labyrinth, quite like the one they’re in right now.

“There are six— technically seven. Only five of us originally, and the other two were made as either backups or simply out of their own desire to become AIs. One is currently active, unthinking and working in the place of the Telepath. The other of the extra two is sleeping in the tree that towers over the Netherworld.”

“Who’s the fifth,” Seija says, not as much a question as it is a demand. Byakuren nearly _flinches._ There’s something vulnerable, in the light that hits her eyes when the fifth is mentioned.

“The fifth is. Was,” Byakuren tries to correct, but Seija notices how her voice breaks on the word. “The Administrator, Toyosatomimi no Miko.” She pauses. The vulnerability in Byakuren’s eyes hardens, like water freezing over into thick clouded ice. “She is sealed at the center of this labyrinth, in the rumored node about twenty-five feet behind us. She was the government head, the lawmaker. Charismatic, powerful, intelligent. She acted as the channel, through which democracy moved.”

“What happened to her?”

The AI freezes. As if her current process had stopped, the light on her circlet blinks, and she speaks softly. 

“She became corrupt. She gained most of the power within the five of us, because she had the ability to manipulate which laws went into action, and was able to restrict our actions as well. Eventually, her need for power gave her the desire to become more than human. She convinced the Lunarian to help with an operation which would convert her mind into data, and make her into a superior AI. And then,” Byakuren says, her voice shaking from either anger or sadness, “she found it necessary for all of us.”

Seija nods her head, quietly, urging her to continue.

“I was the last one. I did not consent to the procedure, so the integration did not go as planned. Miko _knew_ this, and yet, she did it. I am left with half a human mind, which is often overrun by my computer’s processes. My only wish, in the beginning, was for there to be equality. For every human and youkai in the city to be raised to a level in which they can thrive without fear of oppression or poverty. However. That is a very human wish. Had my AI worked, it would have been viable. But my human and computer side are very disconnected.” She points to the electronic circlet. “Why I need to wear this. For a semblance of connection.”

She remembers something Byakuren said previously. A half-life.

“My wish was so pure that the only way my AI knew how to act on it was to bring people down to the same level. Eventually, I was dangerous. And without my own permission, I singlehandedly forced conformism onto society. I was a wrecked mind. I still am. My employees, my own friends, turned on me, and I let them. They joined me because they wanted peace; they left for the same reason. But you knew that, didn’t you? Nue.”

“Hijiri.” Nue’s gaze suddenly wavers, then breaks, and she drops her head, a choked noise coming from her throat. Seija watches as a droplet hits the dust below her, right between the feet. She’s still numb, not quite processing these interactions, but every so often she notices Byakuren looking over at her, as if gesturing with her eyes to Nue, that something is out of place here. _Me? Am I out of place?_ Seija blinks, the corner of her mouth turning down in disapproval.

Then the name. That’s not the name Seija knows the AI to have. Unless, _oh God,_ it’s her last name? Since when do AIs need last names? And then how—

“You haven’t changed at all, Nue,” Byakuren says, peacefully, like laying down a mercy blow, and Seija _understands._

 

The scars between her fingers. An ex-government assassin. Nue Houjuu.

_That’s why I was so surprised when she let me quit. When she didn’t kill me, for needing to leave._

But then how, how did she not know? She even said, in cyberspace, about the fourth AI project, _Nitori knows more than I do, so._ Then, again, all her words come back, things she said jokingly, _joke’s on you, shitbaby, I’m over 800 years old,_ how could she _not_ know that the fourth AI was even real? Seija should have seen it first, how she cornered her in the alleyway, said she wanted to participate in this great coup d’etat, did she have any reason? She had just dealt with trauma from an assassin job, and if Seija calculates it right, the job was for the fourth AI standing right in front of them—

Seija opens her mouth, first, but Nue gets in before her.

“Don’t say that,” she tries, her wings lashing, aggravated, against her back. “You know I’ve been through so much since—”

“Wait,” Seija shrieks, lurching forward, “ _wait!_ ”

 

And then, everything stops. Byakuren and Nue both, frozen, taking back any words. Seija feels a storm inside her, the hate lashing out and dragging everything in, but not the good kind of hate. This is the kind she doesn’t like, the kind that doesn’t feel good. This is— she _knows_ humans have a word for this, this is betrayal. This is what it feels like. 

“Nue,” Seija turns, looks directly into her partner’s eyes. They’re wide, crimson, rippling with worry. “You knew. You knew her, and you didn’t tell me.”

 

* * *

 

Utsuho pieces things together, with quiet, patient hands.

It’s amazing how hard she can work when she’s able to concentrate. Her hands no longer tremble with energy. Orin is there, stabilizing the core, letting it cool down and testing every so often. Satori’s form wavers silently in the air for seconds, leaving afterimages, and then disappears. But Utsuho doesn’t stop working, and Orin doesn’t stop praying.

All they can do now is work and hope. There isn’t enough time. The attack on Chireiden is gaining magnitude, now that Eirin has spotted Koishi. The little AI can take care of herself, but she can’t take care of everything else. If they don’t hurry, Orin thinks, Koishi will inevitably destroy something important, something that they cannot take back. She trembles just thinking about it, but at that moment her hand brushes Utsuho’s against the glowing heat of the core, and she makes eye contact with her best friend— _girlfriend,_ she corrects herself, and something heavy in her chest finally lightens up— and Utsuho gives a smile like the sun, a smile like the end of the world.

Satori’s form comes in and out of vision, sputtering before fading. Orin focuses again, though her heart is pounding from anxiety and from the incessant butterflies in her stomach when she catches a glimpse of Utsuho’s face, and the room goes silent once more.

 

* * *

 

“You _knew._ ”

Nue freezes. There are tears in her eyes now, and she’s nearly cowering, faced with Seija’s anger. Not with fear of being hurt, but fear of losing her.

“You fucking _knew_ this whole time. And you didn’t tell me. You _betrayed_ me,” Seija spits, venom dripping from her tongue. “You said you would do anything. Why? Why did you even fucking _go_ with me in the first place? I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you,” she continues, and with trembling hands she reaches into her pocket and draws her knife, holding it at arm’s length, pointing it directly between Nue’s eyes.

“That… that was my past, Seija, it had nothing to do with— augh!”

Seija swings the knife, not looking to strike, but coming a bit too close for Nue’s trained senses to ignore. She leaps back, towards the end of the hallway, coming ever closer to the tumbling black node. There are tears now, blurring her eyes, hot and painful. She keeps the knife leveled at Nue.

“You were the closest thing I’ve ever had… to a friend.”

“I still am,” Nue whispers.

“But I’m going to kill you.”

“Seija, no.”

“Don’t _fucking_ tell me no. Don’t you fucking _dare!_ ” Seija lashes, body moving like a snake but without a purpose, and Nue doesn’t even bother to sidestep the aimless swing. She looks down briefly, sees a blossom of red near her ribs. “You were the only person I ever trusted. And now. And _now!_ ”

“ _Please._ ”

“I _trusted_ you,” is the last thing Seija says before she lunges forward.

 

Meanwhile, Koishi’s hands drift over the screen. She finds herself in a folder she’s never seen before, something locked down. The energy within it feels dangerous, sharp and powerful— she can feel it. This is what she needs. What they all need.

_saigyouji.exe_

 

 

Everything drifts, suspended in midair, for one second in slow motion— rubble falling from the walls, branches breaking, Nue’s shaking arms as she braces herself, the tear in Seija’s eye freezing as it falls— and then, light. Light and explosions, butterflies from nowhere, deadly and crackling with electricity. It falls from above like rain, or tiny shining needles, and bursts into flames, spirals out in beautiful patterns of fire and death. A figure rises from the center of the tree, the broken, old skeleton of a tree that crowns the Netherworld. Like a phantom, she fades into view, eyes closed, pink hair rippling with the force of everything.

Nue, bleeding from the ribs. Seija, lunging towards her with nothing but unfounded rage in her mouth. The ground shakes, throws them off balance. Byakuren’s tears fall freely as she leans back against the crumbling wall. Seija has no such privilege. In a last-ditch attempt to live, Nue turns slightly to the right. The jolt and cracking of the stone below Seija’s feet makes her waver, stumble, and _then_ — 

swept away from the light and danger of the moment, tumbling down, knife still pointed outwards, Seija disappears into the portal, into clear, pulsing blackness.


End file.
